How Dereck Came to Hate Cameron
by SophiaTab
Summary: Pretty much what the title says. Because there has to be more than a simple reason, Derek tore up watching her dance. This is the back story I want them to have. The first chapter is tame, but it's rated M for later chapters. Please, Read & Review!
1. Chapter 1

**First Contact**

Derek Reese's squad found her in the ruins of the old Russian consulate. Because of their many emergency storage caches the old consulates had always been prime hunting grounds for resistance fighters scourging for supplies. They found the intact bunker door, definitely the best luck they had in a long time. When, they bypassed the locks, swung open the doors, and there she stood in the middle of a pre-war electronic warehouse it was as if Lady Luck had been flown down from heaven to grace their presence.

It was hard for women to be pretty in their world. With so little water, it was better to drink what you had than bathe? People ate what they could find and to heck with balanced diets for a good complexion. Beauty treatments? those were legends of the past. Even still there were some women with natural beauty to inspire their masturbatory fantasies. This one she took all their breath away. Her skin was milk, not a blemish or a bruise, and no radiation roughness. And those eyes! For the first time in their lives they realized brown could be something rich and lush, not like the mud and dirt that pervade their lives daily. For endless minutes they just circled around her barely able to believe she was real.

Derek finally broke the silence. "You got a name?" He had encountered ferals so regressed they didn't speak, but they were usually naked. This woman wore clothes, soft white stuff, probably from the bunker.

She gazed directly into his eyes. He felt almost light-headed. She was amazing looking. "Cameron."

"How about a last name?" Derek continued.

She shook her head. That didn't surprise him. A lot of younger people had no idea what a last name was until the resistance gave them one.

While his men continued to ogle her, Derek scanned the bunker. Cameron could have been in here for years. He saw mountains of discarded food cans. Then he saw the old man in the chair brain splattered all over the wall behind him. He brought Cameron to the body. "Who is this?"

"Philip." Her eyes were emotionless, but he must have been the one that saved them both. Cameron would have been a baby when the bombs dropped. Of course, that didn't make old Phillip a saint either, a lot of men saved women just so they could use them.

"Was he your man?" Bailey asked.

Cameron looked puzzled.

Sumner chimed in too damn eager for answers about that situation. "Your husband, your lover, the guy makes you howl like a wild coyote with radiation burns."

Her expression didn't change. "Phillip took care of me. He never made me howl. He kept saying the food was running low and there wouldn't be enough. He said I should eat him if I could."

Derek cut the men off before anyone could reply to that. "He was probably her father." The old man did look like Cameron, and who else, but a parent would sacrifice themselves like that. "Did Phillip have a last name?"

Cameron shook her head again.

"In the old days, they use to make last names out of the father's first name, so your last name's Phillips, Cameron Phillips. Can you remember that?

"Cameron Phillips," she repeated.

A smile flashed across her face for a moment. Derek felt something too much like electricity strike him. Damn, this was the world that had been. A pretty girl smiled at him and suddenly everything felt wonderful.

He forced himself to think about the practical. The bunker was filled with electronics. Old Warsaw Pact stuff that Skynet had not infected. It was a mother lode of supply hunting. "Sumner, radio for a salvage team. We need to harvest this."

Sumner pointed at Cameron. "What do we do with her?"

"Take her with us. It wouldn't be safe to leave her here." Actually, the opposite was probably true. This bunker had avoided detection for years, maybe even since the beginning of the war. But the Resistance needed the electronics and if they were going to deprive her of a safe haven, he should at least find her someplace else. Then, he noticed Bailey and Sumner high fiving each other. Not good. "Hey, think with your big heads, not the little ones. We still got to get back to Alpha."


	2. Chapter 2

**Infiltration**

She had survived the dogs! The new jammers worked and she was inside the human military complex known as Firebase Alpha. It wasn't John Connor's headquarters at Crystal Peak, but no Terminator had ever succeed in infiltrating the humans this far before.

Of course, Cameron was aware that as an experimental model she wasn't built like other free standing units. Lab-grown human neural cortex cloned from pre-war tissue had been grafted to her central processing unit. To some extent she was still an incomplete model, unable to interface with the whole of Skynet. How many times had that been reiterated during her training process? Four-thousand, nine-hundred and sixty-three times.

She had not expected the human resistance to be so organized. According to her programming files they were organic viruses, errors in code that would destroy the system with their chaos. But they had effective defensive protocols similar to the central processing core. One thing was rather exceptional, she noted. When subprograms of free standing units within Skynet reached different conclusions, they always deferred to the program of greater hierarchy. This did not appear to be the procedure of the human resistance. Right now the human who had brought her into Firebase Alpha, Lieutenant Derek Thomas Reese was arguing with his commanding officer. Cameron sat outside the area designated as Commander Perry's office, but her sensors picked up every word of the conversation inside.

"You can't put that girl into refugee quarters, sir."

"You know the procedures all refugees go to Resettlement." Commander Perry's voice was deeper with age than Derek Reese, a man in his forties at least. Useful intel.

Derek Reese's voice grew gruffer, lower in tenor. ""You and I both know resettlement is a jungle. We took that girl out of a safe shelter and then we raided it out for everything of value. For what we got from that place we owe her a uniform and a ration card."

A female resistance fighter entered the office area and Cameron's attention shifted. There was very little data on the female soldiers. They were more persistent than their male counterparts and endured greater body damage before extinguishing. One data string within the central core theorized to explain their increased stamina that the female soldiers originated in the less radiation saturated southern continent. The woman was mesoamerican, but so was a fair percentage of the population of pre-war California, so that was no indicator of the soldier's origin. She was of normal height which indicated pre-war birth in an area abundant food. She had a major's oak leaves and a patch over one eye. Her arms were covered with terminator kill patches. Perhaps she was here to conduct another test.

She squatted down. Her one good eye gazed over Cameron for fifty-eight seconds longer than was normal when a human made eye-contact. But less time the male humans spent looking. Then she opened the door to Commander Perry's office. "She can help Nina watch the babies. Nina already said she needs more hands. Hey, Derek."

"Your Amazons shouldn't be keeping those kids at the front, Acevada." Commander Perry seemed as dissatisfied with the female major as he was with Lieutenant Reese.

Acevada was major's name. Cameron filed the information. It was easy to find things out about humans. If she listened long enough, they would tell her everything.

"Atzlan women don't feed our babies chalk as long as our breasts can give them milk."

Derek Reese signaled to Cameron. "Come inside."

Commander Perry made the same eye-scanning motion up and down her body that all the other human males she had encountered did. It was possible the humans had augmented their biosystems with eye scanners, but she did not consider it probable given the state of their technology. However she dutiful recorded the behavior, it would be important in the future programming of male model Terminators.

"Look at her. Are you going to put her in Resettlement alone with the street packs and the escapees from the concentration camps?"

The muscles of Commander Perry's eyes relaxed. Prisoners did this when they were about to give up in interrogation. "All right, but as civilian support staff. She doesn't get a weapon until I know we can trust her. And she is your responsibility." He glanced at Acevada and Derek. "Both of you."

Cameron remembered something from an old film reel about sailors boarding a ship for the first time. She held out her hand.

A few more muscles relaxed in Commander Perry's face. He shook her hand. "Welcome to Firebase Alpha, Ms. Philips."

Major Aceveda handed her a K-bar knife with a leg holster. "Because you may need to cut off some _puto's_ balls, _hermana_."

Cameron glanced over at Derek Reese.

"Don't pull that out until somebody teaches you how to use it or you are going to get yourself killed." There were no inflections or pitch changes in his voice this time.

. . . . . . . .

There was a couple waiting for Derek outside his quarters. He had forgotten about the Cutters. Nina Hernandez had asked him earlier today if he would impregnate the wife. Oh well, Kyle could watch Cameron. It wasn't as if his baby brother would try anything with a living woman. Or if he did try to score that wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Kyle handled the introductions. "Derek, this Brenda and Will Cutter, the couple Nina talked to you about."

Will Cutter had two Terminator patches and radiation burns all over his face. But he looked like a decent guy. Derek wouldn't impregnate a woman married to an asshole.

"We've been together four years," Brenda said nervously.

"You don't have to tell me anything. If Nina Hernandez vouches for you, that's all I need to know."

He unlocked the door and slide it open for her. Brenda darted inside without looking at his eyes. He handed Kyle a canteen. "It's water with a shot or two of vodka. You and Mr. Cutter have a few drinks. Share it with Cameron if she wants some." At least Kyle hadn't started asking him questions about Cameron.

Inside Brenda Cutter was on the edge of tearing up. For some women it wasn't easy to accept that the only way they would have kids was to let some guy other than their husbands fuck them. The ones that didn't have a problem with the new social arrangements didn't need someone like Nina Hernandez to find fertile men.

Derek handed her a towel. "Mrs. Cutter, if you'll lay down on the bed and place this under your hips, it will be over soon."

"You can call me, Brenda."

"It's better if I don't. Try not to touch me when we fuck."

He undid his fly, pulled out his manhood, and tried to think of women he would sleep with for pleasure, not procreation.

"I'm ready," Brenda Cutter said. She looked hurt. She must not have understand the reasons for his instructions."

"Is your husband the only man you've been with?" he asked.

"I've had a few boyfriends."

Derek gazed directly into her eyes and tried to take some of the iron out of his voice. "This is nothing like that. When you go back to him, you can tell him, you never put your arms around me. You never grabbed my ass or dug your heels into my back. I never touched your tits. We never kissed. He's the only man you want to do that with and if you remember me, it's as a bad dream about stone-age infertility treatment. Something you had to use, not something you wanted."

After that, it went okay. As okay as breeding sex could go. That kind of sex had always been too mechanical for his taste, so he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on dead movie stars. It didn't work very well this time, but Brenda Cutter wasn't the temptation.

He kept thinking of Cameron. It was crazy, she was a head case probably. But she was here. Alive, warm, available if he wanted to barter for sex. No, she wasn't that type. Her eyes haunted him. He burned to know what they looked like when she came.

Mrs. Cutter didn't speak until afterwards. "If I have a little girl, I'm going to tell her about you."

"Why bother?"

For the first time that night, Brenda Cutter smiled. "Because fifteen years from now if she meets you, I don't want to risk her falling in love with biological father."

"I'm probably not going to be alive in fifteen years."

"We all have to have hope, lieutenant."

After she left, Kyle and Cameron came in for the night. Most younger brothers would be begging for the details or trying to get matched up themselves with some woman that only wanted no-strings sex, but Kyle refused all offers. Derek didn't think his little brother was gay, just the one teenage boy in the world too mysteriously too preoccupied with something else not to be looking for sex.

"Why did Mrs. Cutter squeeze my shoulders. She told me I was a wonderful, unselfish soul." Cameron asked.

"Because she thought you were my brother's woman" Kyle said. He turned toward Derek. "Is she your woman? You never brought anybody home before." His gaze went back to Cameron. "You'll have to forgive my brother. He's always on edge the nights after he serves as a sperm pump."

"Her name is Cameron Philips. Women's dormitory is full. She needed a safe place to sleep."

"So where does she sleep?" Kyle asked.

Derek tossed him the blanket. "She gets one end of the bed. I take the other. You're on the floor."

Cameron sat down on the opposite end of the bed. Gracefully she drew her legs up near her chin until she was coiled up like razor wire. Or maybe a rose was a better description. It had been what, fifteen years since he saw a rose, but yeah she reminded him of a rose folding up to sleep for the night.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

She shook her head. A sheath of sable hair fell across her face.

He had an intense urge to reach over and brush it back behind her ears, but he held back. Her whole world had changed in a matter of hours. The last thing she needed was him hitting on her. He turned on his side against the wall to sleep. It really wouldn't do so soon after breeding sex with Brenda Cutter for anyone to know he was close to a hard on again.

That night Derek dreamed of a world without the machines. Only it wasn't a dream about the past like is usually was. He was in an alternative universe where the machines never arose and Judgement Day never happened. His parents were still alive. Kyle was a freshman in college. And he was home on leave from the army. Well, some things never changed, but is this world his uniform was clean and new and he brushed lint off of it, not pieces of dead comrades.

The whole family was sitting down to dinner when the door bell started ringing.

Kyle said, "I'm not going to get it."

His dad said, "Don't look at me, Margaret, it wasn't my idea to invite her."

Finally, his mother said, "Derek, please get the door. And be nice, she just moved into the neighborhood."

So, he got up leaving an unbelievable banquet of food, at least in terms of the way he lived now. He opened the door and Cameron was standing in front of him. She was wearing a white sundress and sandals like most girls in California did that year. Her eyes were like sugared almonds and he wanted to ask her sincerely, not sarcastically, if she had been an extra in the new Disney movie about flower pixies.

She held out her hand. "Hello, my name is Cameron Phillips."

Behind her nuclear missiles blanketed the sky. He grabbed Cameron hoping to shield her with his body just as his old neighborhood caught on fire.

He woke up dry-heaving. At least, he hadn't screamed. It has been awhile since nightmares of Judgement Day did that to him. He glanced down at Kyle on the floor. His little brother hadn't even work up. Then he noticed Cameron was wide awake.

"Were you dreaming about Mrs. Cutter?" she asked.

"No," he said. _And I'll be damned if I'll tell you what I was dreaming about._

"I thought you might be dreaming about her. You were sweating a lot. Why did you have sexual intercourse with Mrs. Cutter? You don't act like you enjoyed it."

He wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve. "Ms. Cutter wanted to have a baby, but her husband was sterile from radiation. So I helped them out."

"Do you always help women out like that?"

"If they want me to. Look, I don't know what your father taught you about the world, but everything's changed." He reached for the canteen that had held water and vodka. Good, there was still some left. He held it out to Cameron. "Here drink some of this. We both need to sleep." Afterwards, he wondered why her question had irritated him so much. She hadn't been judgemental only curious. Maybe that was it. Maybe part of him wanted her to be more than just curiosity about his sex life.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Little Mermaid**

The next morning Derek and Kyle Reese escorted Cameron to her assignment with the Resistance: the children's wing. Most Resistance woman left for safer areas when they became pregnant, Derek told her, but not Acevada's Amazons. They never left the front. For them war-time camaraderie had morphed into a new religion. They claimed no husbands and raised their children communally. Oddly enough, Sarah Conner wasn't a major figure in their faith. She merited a mere honorable mention as an example of how mothers shaped the world. Instead, they awaited the _Nuevo Madre_ whose coming they claimed would change everything. Supposedly they worshipped an image of her in a recess deep in the Amazons' quarters where only their members were allowed to go.

"Yeah, they're crazy," Derek said. "But probably not any worse than the rest of us, I guess. Don't get messed up in their death cult."

"Why?" she asked. The Amazons were efficient soldiers worthy of admiration.

"Because they always cut themselves up and you have smooth skin," Derek replied.

"The smoothness of my skin does not affect its function." That was a dangerous comment. Too calculating and analytical, she would have to be more careful.

"It's not about function. Beautiful things shouldn't be destroyed." Derek replied.

"You think I'm beautiful. Is that why you let me stay in your quarters?" Judging from the silence that followed apparently that was an even more incorrect thing to say.

Kyle Reese spoke up. "None of the Amazons has ever used my brother as a stud. It's a real blow to his ego."

"So says the virgin," Derek shot back.

Insults were part of the socialization process for human males, especially among siblings, Cameron noted. But similar remarks had also been observed leading to violence. The variables that determined these circumstances must be significantly more intricate than the message itself. She would have to observe much more of the Reese brothers to correctly map the behavior.

The children's room was unlike any other on Firebase Alpha. Instead of endless brown and grey, there was color everywhere. Even the pens, called cribs, that the baby humans slept in were bright and impractical. The largest wall was dominated by a mural of interlocking circles. She had seen smaller, less embellished versions before on gutted tank factories and in the larger ruins of the Hunter-Killers. So now she knew, this symbol meant the Amazons had been there.

A middle-aged Mesoamerican woman extended her hand. "I'm Nina Hernandez." She lead Cameron closer to the mural. "It's the cycle of life."

"Where does it come from?" Cameron asked.

"It doesn't come from anywhere. It simply is. All things are intertwined to each other. There's no beginning or end."

The work required of her in the children's room took very little of her programming. Comforting the babies if they cried required discovering which vibration patterns of the voice or finger pats restored their sense of security. Changing their diapers was no worse a hazard to her biosystemthan many chemical weapons. The Amazons took turns feeding the babies, each woman sharing her breast milk with as many infants as possible so that her sisters could maintained patrols and conduct other operations. If more humans adopted this strategy, Cameron calculated they could increase their number of front-line fighters by at least twenty-five percent.

. . . . . .

A couple of Scav traders came through Alpha after sun fall. Most of the Resistance considered Scavs too crazy to be reliable sources of information, but Derek always tried to be there when they were questioned. Scavs could find supplies in the heart of Skynet territory and manage to make it out alive. Crazy didn't mean stupid.

As they were walking out, Sumner told him, Cameron back flipped a guy from C Platoon, nearly dislocated his shoulder. The punk had it coming. He did grab her ass.

He noticed the light before opening the door to his quarters. Usually if he or Kyle needed a lot of illumination, they slide the door open and used the corridor lights. It saved precious batteries. He found Kyle teaching Cameron how to clean a rifle by the light of a crank lantern. Crank lanterns were worth their weight in gold.

"Perry brought it by for Cameron. He even hung around and cranked the thing for a solid hour." Kyle explained.

Okay, he had expected the younger guys would go gaga over Cameron for awhile, but not his commanding officer. Perry was old enough to be her father. "He ask for anything in return?"

"Not a thing, bro. Though something tells me, he'll be around more often. Your girl is a hot commodity."

"She's not my girl. She's not a commodity either. And stop talking about her as if she isn't here." Derek said.

Reese looked genuinely contrite. "I'm sorry, Cameron."

She looked toward Derek.

He realized she didn't know how to respond. "If you want to accept his apology, you can say that or you can dislocate his shoulder."

Her mouth didn't change, but her pixie eyes sparkled. "I don't want to dislocate his shoulder. I want to accept his apology."

"Thanks." Kyle smiled at Cameron when he said that.

She smiled back. They could be a nice couple together, Derek thought. Kyle was closer to her age. The only problem was Kyle seemed completely oblivious to the fact that Cameron was a female, something he couldn't seem to forget.

How old was Cameron? Sixteen? Seventeen? Maybe she just seemed so young because she had no experience living around people. Not that it mattered anymore. If you were capable of fighting, you fought. And if a female was capable of breeding, she usually did, if she had the opportunity.

"Will Commander Perry try to fuck me?" Cameron asked.

Derek and Kyle exchanged looks.

"If he thinks he's got a chance, he'll try. If you don't want him, just tell him no. He'll back off." Derek said.

"Perry will. With some of the others, you may have to dislocate some more shoulders," Kyle said.

"Why are man so obsessed with sex?"

"We're hardwired that way. If we weren't the species wouldn't continue." Derek replied.

Cameron turned those perfect pixie eyes on him. She didn't look human at times, more like some magical creature that had somehow dropped into his life. "You haven't tried to fuck me even though you think I'm beautiful. Kyle hasn't tried either."

"Kyle is interested in other things." What the hell those other things were Derek had no idea, but he didn't want to have this conversation with Cameron. "And I get plenty of action."

"Yeah, he's slamming them against the wall most nights," Kyle commented.

Derek noticed Cameron's puzzled expression. "Ask Nina Hernandez to explain that to you," he said quickly.

"I'm not a whore," she said matter-of-factly.

How had this conversation dived off the deep off so fast? Derek wondered. "Do you even know what that means?"

"A whore is a woman or man who uses sexual activities as a commodity in bartering. There are several on the base though that's not their official job designation. Nina Hernandez talks a lot."

"And I don't want to how the Amazons would define someone as a whore." Derek said.

"They're not like you think. Some of them have husbands. They just don't expect them to do all the fighting and dying." Cameron explained.

Okay, he hadn't known that. However, he really didn't want to continue this conversation. "Cameron, have I ever said, you had to do anything to stay here?"

"No."

She looked worried, but he was in no mood to be comforting. "I'll be back in a little bit. Don't wait up."

He meant to smooth things over with C Platoon's lieutenant. They ended up against the wall in the first vacant alcove. She was a red head with freckles all over her body or at least everywhere he could see with just their pants and part of her shirt undone. Afterwards bracing himself against the wall, not feeling like he had finished, but knowing he had, she told him not worry. There wouldn't be any retaliation. In fact, Cameron had made a pretty good impression on her boys.

"And I'll keep your secret also," she said ducking out from under his arms.

He leaned against the wall and looked back at her. "What the hell are you talking about?"

She looked sad. "You whispered her name when you came. Better deal with it soon, Derek, any one of us could die tomorrow."

He started walking Cameron back and forth places. At first he told himself, it was so she wouldn't have to dislocate anymore shoulders, but the truth was he liked her company. She had a wild sense of humor, wicked and dark.

It was like, well, dating except people didn't date anymore. If they were attracted to each other they fucked. Or even if they weren't attracted, but thought there was a possibility of conceiving another child to renew the dwindling supply of humans on the planet, they fucked.

When the little ones were sleeping, he would hang out in the children's room with her. The children's room had a collection of salvaged picture books. Cameron treated them like alien artifacts. Oh hell, that's probably what they were to her. It would be generations before any childhood resembled the bright, sanitized world depicted on their pages. She was so full of questions about the world that had been and for once he didn't find it heart breaking to remember things like shopping malls and Disney cartoons. Lying on the mats, he would pretend to find shapes in the painted clouds on the ceiling while she whispered questions about the stories to him.

"If the Prince could defeat the Sea Witch why doesn't he do it before she harms King Triton?"

He looked at the book's cover. _The Little Mermaid_. "Because this was a Disney movie. They had to have an action-adventure plot. The original is grimmer."

"But she loses her people. She's cut off forever. What's grimmer than that?"

"I don't remember."

"Then how do you know it was grimmer."

With her arching eyebrows and soft brown hair hung over the back of her shoulder, she looked like one of Walt Disney's woodland fairies. This moment, being with her, not fighting, not fucking, just talking, it felt so damn good. He didn't want to ruin it. He didn't want her to stop being like this with him. "She flung herself into the sea and became a spirit of the air. Most of the old fairy tales are grim like that stories. Life was brutal then."

"And life is so less brutal now?"

He looked up into her sparkling eyes. It took every ounce of strength he had not to pull her down on top of him and kiss her until she stopped asking questions.

. . . . . .

The days were getting shorter. Until the bombs, LA winters had been a joke. Now they were a grim reality and the Resistance scrambled for fuel and insulation. Cameron had started collecting scraps.

"I got them from the Amazons. I can sew them together to make another blanket," she explained.

"Are you getting cold at night?" Derek asked.

She paused before answering. "Little bumps pop up on my skin."

Derek took off the knit cap he wore and placed it on her head. He had one spare uniform blouse. It was actually in better condition than the one he wore most days. He took it out of the footlocker and wrapped it around her.

Instead of taking the opposite end of the bed that night, she laid down beside him. "Do you want to fuck tonight? That would generate more heat." she asked matter-of-factly.

Coughing wouldn't kill Kyle, but he sounded bad for a moment.

"No, but come here. Sharing body heat will keep us both warm." He pulled her into a tight circle of his arms. Nothing he had touched in a long time had been as soft as her. She smelled of the dirt and sweat they wallowed in everyday, but there was something else also like a pure layer of air just after the rest. He wondered what her skin would taste like.

"Is that the reason, you fuck so many women?" she asked.

"I've never slept with any of the women, I've fucked," he replied.

From that night on he didn't go back to his quarters without hooking up at least once. He perfected the art of sliding a leather glove into his mouth, so he didn't say the wrong thing at the wrong moment. And then with his system temporarily purged, he would go home and hold her all night like a good luck charm.

It didn't matter that nothing was going on between him and Cameron. She was his friend. Cameron could have had any man on the base, or a couple even, that she chose to spend time with him was better than sex. Right? At least he thought he had everything under control until he saw her dance.

Someone had found intact recordings of old music and given it to the children's room, so the kids might grow up knowing some of the beauty of the old world. The music was soft and flowing; completely unlike the turbo-punk rock the Resistance soldiers sometimes listened to discharge the violence that surrounded them. The melody almost drove him to the brink. Then he saw her dancing. Children's picture books were spread out all along the floor. She moved from book to book mimicking the illustrations recreating ballet from nothing, but tattered pages. It was so wonderful it took his breath away and he started choking up thinking about how much the world had lost to the machines.

She stopped in front of him. "I'm I doing it wrong?"

"No!"

"Then why do you look so sad?"

The walls exploded inside Derek. She was what was left of the world and he was too damn exhausted to fight his feelings anymore. He crushed her against his chest, found her mouth like a heat-seeking missile and seared his lips over hers. She was nourishment for the parts inside him that had starved so long. All the places that had been sealed away were coming undone. Inside he cried for her. It was love, not lust when he lived with a woman for weeks and didn't dare touch her, when he was willing to fight every bastard that looked the wrong way when she crossed a corridor and when he would take on a whole army of T-888 just to make it back home in order spend ten minutes with her. It was happening faster than it would have in the old world, but he didn't have time to fool around with most courtship games.

His lungs demanded air. He rested his forehead against hers. "Cameron, I see your face in every woman I'm with." He gazed into her eyes. Confusion? Amazement? He couldn't tell.

"Is that good or bad?"

Was she making a joke or trying to brush him off? Maybe none of the things he felt for her were returned. He loosened his hold on her. She trembled. Nervousness, even fear he could handle. He was a scary guy just back from the front and she had lived all her life in a bunker. As long as it wasn't rejection? He could handle that too, but it would hurt.

He took his hands off her waist. "Was I out of line?"

"I don't think so."

That meant yes as far as he was concerned. He kissed her again, slower, softer, coaxing her lips to open for him instead of the devouring all out assault from his tongue that had happened before. Her mouth was sweet and cool, temporarily easing the fire inside him. Then she started kissing him back!

The few times Derek had kissed a woman had never felt like kissing Cameron. Her tongue slide between his lips with a shower of sparks and with that touch he was lost. He barely remembered where they were. The war hadn't happened. The machines were gone. There was only Cameron and the way it felt when her tongue spared with his. She was pulling him somewhere and he didn't care. He would follow her to hell and back.

The wall of the playroom loomed in front of him. He nearly collided with a very accurate reproduction of Goofy. Her fingers were on his waist. He grabbed them just in time.

She looked up innocently. "Aren't we going to fuck? A slam against the wall, isn't that the way you always do it?"

Breathing heavy he rested his hands on the wall above her shoulders. "You listen to my brother too much. Don't you want more than a slam from me?"

She nodded.

Sweet blessed relief washed over him. He kissed her forehead quick before he lost it and did take her on one of the playroom mats. The kids did not need that much of a lesson in biology when they came back from dinner.


	4. Chapter 4

**Deflowering a Artificial Angel**

Derek managed to get them back to his quarters without any accidents. But, once they were alone, he felt nervous in a way he hadn't for years with a woman. This was another first. It wasn't breeding sex. It sure as hell wasn't recreational fucking. Commitment sex? If-I-can-make her-come-enough-I-won't-have-to-say-anything-else-tonight sex? Cameron was cool. She was his woman all right.

They laid back in the bed together, kissing like Judgement Day was going to happen tomorrow. She was silk and chocolate and sunlight and fresh air. He wanted more than pleasure with her. Happiness. Safety. A future.

He undid her clothes with lightening speed. She glowed in the dim light; perfect like nothing had been since the war. Her breasts were half moons of cream. Her nipples were raspberries. She seemed surprised when he suckled her.

"What's wrong?" He asked staring into her puzzled eyes.

"That's how the Amazons feed their babies," she explained.

"Well, it's how I feed my hard on." He kissed the soft valley between her breasts and felt her body hum in return. His nerves were strung out to their limit. A hundred terminators could be raging through the base and he wouldn't care. All he wanted was Cameron.

When he thrust into her, she spiked hard and high and then grew very, very still. Gazing into her wide eyes and locked between vise-like walls below, he quickly realized why and it humbled him. He should have realized, raised in a bunker with her father, Cameron had never had a man before. "Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

He held himself steady to sketch out this single, perfect moment when the two of them became one. She was something, a woman that cracked jokes while he took her virginity. God and Heaven! He had never done that before! There had been a lot of sex in his life, but he had never slept with a woman for the first time. Since Judgement Day, he had never had anything, not a pair of boots, a coat, or a rifle, that hadn't already been used by somebody else. It was almost too much to believe. She was here. She wanted him when she could have had anybody and certainly someone that could keep her more safe and comfortable than he could currently do.

And thinking of comfort, he had to slow down. Her insides were squeezing him so tight, it was sort of painful, but in a good way adding fuel to fire that raged through his body. But he knew he had to be hurting her. He nudged her head over and nuzzled her ears. "Bite me."

"What?"

"Bite me. Claw my back. Tear one of my nipples it makes you feel better."

"Why?"

She still had that angel face. He would carry that image in his head until the day he died. "Because you're so tight."

"Is that bad?"

"No!" Need trembled through his body. He couldn't maintain this level of absolute control much longer. "Maybe in a way yes. Cameron, I don't want to hurt you."

Those graceful dancing legs arched around him. It was sublime. Her fingers raked across his scalp. Desire glowed in her eyes. She placed her hands on either side of his face. "I want you to . . ."

He sealed his mouth over her. He didn't want to hear his crude terminology from her lips. They started to move together. She was life and hope in physical form. One thing was for damn sure, she wasn't weak. Her legs were steel bars against his back. She claimed him with her teeth until he was dragging the atmosphere for air.

He was drowning in a universe that had shrunk to the dimensions of one woman. She was the holy object and he was the worshipper. Then the miracle happened, all his pain passed into another world replaced with a single bright, burning moment.

He collapsed lost in her softness. Even before the war he never felt such peace. He had wanted to protect her, but had never dreamed she would be his salvation. For moments like this he could fight, kill, watch his buddies die, and still go on living the next day.

Suddenly, he realized Cameron hadn't said anything. She hadn't moved! He got up off of her. She was totally, perfectly still like a porcelain doll. Good God! Had he done something to seriously hurt her? It was possible. She was small. She had been so tight and there were some major veins not too far from where he had been so vigorously thrusting. _Oh please, God! no, not this! Hasn't my life been hell enough_!

She blinked. Slowly she stirred and gazed over at him.

"Still okay?" he asked earnestly.

"I'm different."

_I'll say. You're mine._

"There's electricity all over my skin," she whispered.

_I made her come! It was the first time and I made her come!_ Maybe that would compensate for the things tonight lacked. She shivered. The room was too cold for her to sleep naked and all they had were rough blankets. Reluctantly he got out of bed.

"There's blood."

She was sitting up on her elbows now. Venus naked to her ankles. But the stain between her legs made him more uneasy than any battle injury he had ever viewed. He should have remembered to grab a towel. He should have climaxed her with his fingers or his tongue before, so she would have been more lubricated. He should have . . . he should have done a lot of things. At least, Cameron seemed more curious than horrified over bleeding. He grabbed a canteen and a towel. The stain seemed larger than it should be, or maybe that was just his guilt, not for taking Cameron, but for not making it better for her.

"I'm sorry for staining the sheet."

He stopped scrubbing and hugged her. "You got nothing to be sorry about. It's not important." He folded the blanket into a pillow, laid it under her head and returned to cleaning up. Thank God, she didn't wince when he touched between her thighs. There was blood, but not much of his fluids. He had blown his load inside her. He hadn't intended to do that. After thinking about half a second, he decided it wasn't the worst thing that could happen to them. He wanted kids with Cameron. Kids, he had fathered, that would actually call him Dad. Only it was going to cut the time they had for living close together. "You may have to go away from here soon."

"I understand. You didn't like the sex. I'll leave." She started to rise from the bed.

He pushed her back down. "The sex was great. But when we have a baby, I don't want you here. I'll get you someplace safer. Crystal Peak, if I can. That place is impregnable. They got a full hospital also."

"Who will be the baby's father?"

Derek smiled. Her sense of humor was back. "I will. It will be the first Reese kid with the Reese name. I'll come see you whenever I can. I'll send you letters with every courier. I want to be with you, but Alpha's too damned dangerous, not for my family."

Someone was pounding on the door probably Kyle. He slide the door open an inch. "Find somewhere else to sleep tonight."

"Where's Cameron?" Kyle asked.

"With me."

Kyle smiled triumphantly. "I knew it! I knew there was something going on between you two!"

"The three of us will talk later." He slide the door shut and he returned to Cameron.

"You sent your brother away. You didn't have too."

"Yeah, I did. Tonight's about us."

"Us?" She looked up at him innocently.

He picked up her hand and kissed it. "Us. My woman and me. Your first time. Cameron, you got to know, I wish I had something better for you tonight."

"But everyone lives this way."

"Doesn't mean they like it," he replied.

She reached up and caressed his face. "What would you have done?"

He hadn't played let's pretend since Kyle was kid and they were hiding in the tunnels pretending rats were Thanksgiving turkey. But tonight, this moment, it seemed less painful to tell her what he would have done if only it were possible, instead of leaving those thoughts unspoken. "You're younger than me. So nobody would think I was using you for sex, we would wait awhile. Even until we got married, if that's what you wanted. We would have a house. No, I would build us a house out in the woods where you could smell the trees and hear birds in the morning. That first night, I wouldn't let you do anything. No unpacking. No housework. After as much foreplay as I could stand, I'd carry you to bed; a real bed with a soft mattress, clean sheets, and pillows. We would have a hot tub. . ."

"A hot tub?"

"It was like a giant bucket big enough for people to sit inside. The water was kept warm and there were these air jets in the sides that kept it circulating. They were the best thing for relaxing muscles. So after sex, I would take you to the hot tub, so you wouldn't be sore. The next morning, I would bring you breakfast in bed."

She looked like an angel laying there. His heart crashed louder than a Centaur patrol. His hands returned to her midsection caressing the soft tissues to make them softer. One thing was for sure, he would have to learn some new words for female anatomy. Flower petals maybe? She strained against his fingertips like he remembered flowers turned toward the sun. Since the bombs dropped had he even thought about flowers until she came into his life? He wanted to leave her breathless again. In the throes of pleasure, she would not have to think about the ruined world above them or the battle to survive. For a few seconds, he could give her peace.

He went to her hips. The scruff on his face was an obstacle, but one he could minimize with a little maneuvering. She shook when he tasted her sweetness. He looked up. "It's okay. I am going to make you come again in a way that won't leave you sore tomorrow."

Her pixie eyes were filled with confusion.

He crawled up her chest and sucked on the deep valley between her breasts where she seemed to be as sensitive as her nipples.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Then just lay back. Let me work my magic." It turned into an endless night. He explored her in ways he had never spent with a woman. Their bodies burned hotter than nuclear fire. There was no obstacle he wouldn't face. No machine he wouldn't fight. Nothing existed for him without her.

In Cameron's arms he dreamed of the alternative universe again. There was no Skynet and the age difference between them was the biggest problem they faced.

He raced into the funeral home. There was still Middle Eastern sand on his BDUs. Cameron was all in black sitting by her father's coffin. She stood up and came to him ignoring the whispers around her. And of course, there were too many whispers. When he took her out on a date three months ago, the neighbors had feasted on the gossip for weeks, especially her father's none too pleased reaction when he found out. It had involved a baseball bat and the windshield of Derek's car.

Without asking he knew she was too tired to cry, too tired to do much of anything accept be held by him. So they stayed that way until everyone else had left and the sun had set outside.

"So what are our plans?" he asked.

"I don't know. I can't afford to keep the house. I don't even know yet, if I can afford college."

It hurt to see her look so scared. He stroked her shoulders. "Marry me?"

"What?"

"This isn't the way I planned it." Gently he eased her off his lap and onto the funeral home couch. He got down on one knee in front of her. "Miss Phillips will you do me the supreme honor of allowing me to become your husband?"

She started crying.

He kissed her hands. "Look, I know military pay isn't the same as civilian, but I'm an officer. We'll have medical and a place to live and you can go to college. I can take care of you."

"I can't take care of you."

"I'm easy. Just put up with me and I'll always come home."

"I don't know how to be a wife. You've had girlfriends."

They had this discussion before about the differences in their ages and their life experiences. It hadn't helped that Cameron's dad had been hyper-strict, so she didn't even have the normal life experiences most eighteen year olds had accummulated. She told him once she had never kissed anyone until they started secretly seeing each other. For all his hard-edged pragmatism, he didn't think it would be a problem because . . . Because, he loved her and if she could see past his wild and rowdy past to the man he really was, he would do whatever it took to make her happy. However, he would never, on threat of death ever tell her about the three stewardesses he joined the mile high club with.

"So, I'll buy you a few sex manuals and we'll go slow." He got up off the floor and put his arms around her. "Cameron, I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I want to marry you."

She laid her head on his shoulder. It felt like some of the tension was leaving her body.

Her voice was soft, but strong. "Yes."

Of course, his folks weren't too happy when he made the announcement an hour later.

"She's barely eighteen years old! Kyle shouldn't even be dating her, let alone you!" Dad always made things sound worse than they were.

"Kyle's dating a physics professor at UCLA. She's thirty-seven, single mom with a teenage son." Revealing that was a violation of the brotherly code, but it was necessary to keep Dad off balance. He could apologize to to Kyle later.

"Do I know nothing about the lives of my own sons?"

Mom spoke next in that tired, sad voice that only came out when Dad and him were fighting. "Michael, please." Her gaze drifted toward Cameron. "Is there a reason the two of you are in a rush to get married?"

"Not that reason!" Derek snapped. He took Cameron's hand. "My job is dangerous. This way if I buy the farm the next mission, she's got some security."

Mom looked kind of happy now. "I'll call the Delphonses. They've been in the catering business for years."

"What?" Dad's head swiveled back toward her.

"Michael, your son is getting married, we'll need a cake, finger sandwiches, vegetable trays, and knowing Derek's friends lots of alcohol."

After that it all dissolved into happy planning, mostly between his mom and Cameron. They could find a bridal gown at one of those discount warehouses tomorrow. Flower arrangements could come from the same florist that handled her father's funeral. And at least Cameron looked happy even though she wasn't smiling yet. Later that night while he was getting ready to go to sleep in his old bedroom, she came to him.

"I don't want to sleep at my old house anymore."

"We have a guest room," he offered. "You don't have to do anything with me until we're actually married."

"You only have seven days leave."

She came closer. Her hands spread out like stars on his bare chest.

It felt good, but he could tell she was more brave than passionate. Gently he took hold of her wrists. "I said we would go slow. You want to sleep with me tonight and just sleep?"

She nodded.

While she undressed, he turned down the bed and got in. They had a real bed, not a metal shelf with a pad on top, and clean, blue sheets. They smelled like detergent, but that was a good smell.

"Can you sleep with me dressed like this?" she asked.

Her slip looked like nothing less than very expensive, very sexy lingerie. He blinked; then held the covers open for her. She laid down on the bed and criss-crossed her hands in the funeral pose. She was way too nervous for either of them to get any sleep.

"You comfortable with the left side of the bed?" he asked.

"It's fine."

He turned on his side facing her. "Hey, this is going to be our sleeping arrangement for the next sixty years. Speak now or forever hold your peace."

She relaxed. Her nose crinkled up. He finally got her to smile. "Promise me you'll wear gowns like this after we're married."

She fingered the tiny shoulder strap. "You think it's pretty?"

"I think it's sexy." He kissed her shoulder; then her chin and her mouth. It was suppose to be a good night kiss, but it didn't stop there. It quickly escalated into an old-fashioned make-out session, the type of which he hadn't engaged in since high school. Accept it wasn't as sexually frustrating as those adolescent fumblings. It was nice. Her mouth tasted sweet. Her lips were petal soft. He kissed her until her skin was flushed with budding desire.

"Are we going to?"

"No." He returned to her lips briefly. "I want to do some recon though."

The pink left her checks. He kissed it back. "You're going to like this," he whispered.

Carefully he explored her, scrutinizing her sweet face as careful as he would field topography, memorizing the touches she seemed to enjoy the most until he brought her to a quick, and apparently to her unexpected, climax. Afterwards, she was honey soft in his arms hanging between consciousness and sleep when he kissed her goodnight for real.

"Are you going to keep doing that?" she murmured.

"Until you have to have more."

He earned her second nose crinkling smile of the night. It felt like he just won the medal of honor. In the dream world unlike the real word hell, he wasn't at a high risk for death tomorrow. He could use his fingers or his mouth on her every night until their wedding night and make that a smooth transition for her instead of a rough tumble. And it was less difficult to face the truth in the dream world, where he didn't risk paying for hope with blood. He looked at her sleepy, but glowing face. "I love you, Cameron."

She pulled him down between her breasts where he would always want to sleep from now on; then she kissed the top of his head. Her voice was so soft, it reminded him of a lullaby. "I love you, too."

A noise from the corridor outside woke him up. He wasn't in his parents' designer house in McMansion California anymore. The bed was nothing more than a thin pad on top of a metal shelf and the one sheet hadn't been washed in weeks. But he was in Cameron's arms.

The noise must have woke her up too. She touched his face. "You're smiling."

He kissed her chest. "I'm glad I'm with you. Go back to sleep. We need the rest."

. . . . .

Cameron spent the night analyzing her programming. Something had gone wrong. She had not intended to attempt sexual intercourse with any of the human males. Based on her analysis of their society, a non-breeding, but sexually active female was frequently regulated to the lowest status: a whore. Such lowered status would limit her ability to gather high level intel on the humans.

She should have concentrated her time on Commander Perry. As the base commander, he was the most logical choice and would have lead to computer access. When she first arrived at Alpha, he had made positive initial contact with her. Only something, perhaps because he was such an exceptional fighter for the Resistance and perhaps because the relationship between him and his brother merited additional study, had caused her to drift toward Derek Reese. Her system had wanted every scrap of data possible about him and even after weeks of observation, recording, categorizing, and compartmentalizing, she still could not understand.

When he kissed her, it had been worse than a plasma shot. All her sensors scrambled. Defensive protocols blanked out. Programming tumbled into chaos and she found herself doing things that made no logical sense, but seemed compelling none the less. She had kissed him back. The experience defied categorization. Her sensors began to register heat in her biosystem when there was no apparent energy source. Nerves activated to full receptor mood with only the stimuli of his mouth and tongue leaving her disorientated and unable to chart the next course of action. Human lips were not suppose to be able to conduct that much electricity!

The sex had been indescribable. She knew what he was going to do, but the reality of it had been something entirely, unlike anything her programming prepared her for. She knew about the temperature rise in his body, the increased blood flow to the penis, the sweating, the panting, the insertion, and other things. But her files had not indicated the uncharacteristic reactions her own systems would have.

She had not expected her biosystem would mimic his behavior. Her system temperature rose as his did. His touch sent shockwaves across her body. Her vagina flooded with moisture. The insertion caused minor bodily damage that her sensors registered, but did not read as requiring attention. Instead her lungs needed more air, her muscles more adrenaline, and she needed more energy from Derek Reese's body.

Then an unknown phenomenon happened before he ejaculated. Her system overloaded only instead of a experiencing a high energy shock that panicked her sensors, something else occurred. An anomaly entered her cycle causing the nervous system to loop over and over upon itself. The sensors that detected pain reversed their firing mechanisms and flooded her biosystem in an extravagant rush.

The energy generated had been powerful enough to time out her system, but even the time out was not like other time outs. She was familiar with the calming effect a reboot had on her neural-processors, but this was more profound even if it took less time to bring her system back on line afterward. After the burst of energy exploded through her, she felt unhinged, unraveled, but complete at the same time as if she had triumphed over an army of opponents and made the system perfect. The whole universe had been perfect for those intense seconds.

And he had been able to replicate the anomaly using either his tongue or his penis several times before succumbing to sleep! Whatever had happened the phenomenon had to be analyzed which meant she had to leave Firebase Alpha. But she would have be careful. Derek Reese now had the ability to leave her completely defenselessly with the touch of his lips.


	5. Chapter 5

**For Better or For Worse**

Derek woke up feeling reborn. Last night no nightmares had haunted him. It had been nothing but wonderful sleep between the two softest pillows a man could ever have.

Cameron was still asleep. She still looked like an angel. She was probably exhausted and that was entirely his fault. He should feel really guilty over it, but he didn't. He felt? He felt happy!

However, there was still a war for survival going on. Careful not to disturb her, he got out of bed and reached for his gear. He remembered the cranberry flavored bars he had been saving in his pack. It's wasn't Eggs Benedict, but it was about the best tasting ration product that got this far up the line. He could get some fresh water before he left for patrol and at least give her breakfast in bed.

When he returned, Cameron had woken up.

"You're going away."

He sat down on the bed and laid the rations beside her. ""It's just a routine patrol. I'll be back in twelve hours. We'll spend more time together. I'll do whatever you want." He licked his lips for emphasis. That promise delighted most women.

But not Cameron, she looked upset. "I should find another bunk. I should find another man. That's what women are supposed to do. You didn't like the sex."

A rage more maniacal than what he held against the machines coursed through him at the thought of Cameron with another man. But he stayed steady. "The sex was great. Best I've ever had. You're suppose go to work then come back here, and we'll have some more fun together."

She was shaking her head rapidly now. "I not suppose to stay after we fuck! I can't breed with you!"

"Doesn't matter!" he snapped. It didn't. He didn't need her to give him children. He needed her to give him a life.

"If we don't breed, they'll say I'm a whore. That I fuck you for a bunk. They'll say I am bad and they won't want me around the base."

He pulled her to her feet.

"I'm leaving," she said.

"No, you're not." Derek slide open the door and led her into the corridor.

Sayles and Bailey were in the first hallway. He ordered them to follow, pick up any of the rest of the platoon they passed and somebody find his little brother pronto. Cameron tried to stop. He dragged her forward. When she tried to speak, he turned toward her for the first time. "I don't have time to talk to you for hours. I barely have time for this." Then without another word he dragged her into the mess hall. "I need Fuentes, the Father Fuentes that gives mass."

A trooper named Cowls gave him a sad look. "Fuentes bought it a day and a half ago."

A white-haired African-American man stood up, "I'm a Baptist minister if that can help you."

Derek nodded. That would do. He let go of his grip on Cameron. Luckily she stayed by his side. "We need the words said over us. Now! Before I go out on patrol again."

He turned and took her quivering chin in his hand. It was nearly time for the patrols to change. He had to move fast. "Look at me. I, Derek Thomas Reese, take you Cameron Phillips, to be my wife for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death us do part, I do."

She looked shocked. He didn't break eye contact. "Just say I do."

She did. The minister said something about now pronouncing them man and wife, but Derek barely heard it. There was nothing, but the roar of blood in his ears as he kissed her. There were so many things he wanted to say like, Cameron you've given me a reason to fight other than vengeance. I want to survive to grow old with you, but there wasn't time. There was barely time for one oxygen-sucking, dizzy kiss. The ancients considered kisses bonds. It was all he could give her. Then he had to let her go,

Nina Hernandez took Cameron by the arm. Kyle pounded him on the back; then kissed Cameron on the cheek.

Derek's eyes swept the room. "Okay, you heard. She's my wife. Any of you mooks lays a hand on her; you'll wish the machines got you."

. . . .

After Derek left, her body still stinging from the electricity in his mouth, Nina Hernandez took charge of Cameron. Chattering all the way, she led the young woman back to the dormitory bunkers. Cameron learned that in the past getting married was a time for celebrations. People threw elaborate parties they couldn't afford, whatever that meant. They wasted food and wore impractical clothing. People gave the couple presents which weren't the same as trades because the recipient didn't have to give anything back except a thank you. Nina gave her a canvas curtain to hang across the bed for privacy on nights when Kyle slept in his brother's quarters, a packet of sewing needles, and a bottle of green oil. Olive oil. Nina said it was the best.

"What's it for?" Cameron asked. Olive oil wasn't good for weapons.

"It's for your woman's parts."

"They have to be oiled?" It was true some of her mechanical joints required lubrication to function optimally, but she had internal mechanisms to accomplish that. It had never occurred to Cameron that her biosystem might need similar.

Nina looked at her sympathetically. "Your Derek is hung like high-intensity bomber. Most of the time that's a good way for a man to be, but today you're limping."

She had been moving with extra care this morning since she wasn't sure if the torn membrane would repair itself or if she was suppose to that. She picked up the packet of needles. "Are these for my woman parts also?"

Nina's eyes widened. She took the packet out of Cameron's hands. "Oh no! where did you get such an idea?"

"The membrane in my vagina tore last night."

Nina pulled back the blanket. Despite Derek's scrubbing a pink stain remained. Slowly Nina smoothed Cameron's hair back behind her ears. Humans did that to comfort each other, Cameron remembered.

"It's natural for that to tear. Derek won't let you hurt again," Nina explained. She pressed the bottle of oil into Cameron's hand. "Tonight when you start the sex give this to Derek. He'll know what to do."

Cameron nodded. It seemed the safest thing to do. With so many eyes on her, especially Nina's, she certainly couldn't sneak out of Firebase Alpha now. Nothing made sense. Maybe if she collected more intel on Derek, she could put the pieces together to calculate the proper responses.

Nina had given her more pieces of information on Derek, but they were all related to sex. How did she know so much? "You have two children. Have you had sex with Derek?"

The corners of Nina's mouth turned up. The humor smile, she must believe her gifts and words had made the changes she desired. She smoothed Cameron's hair again. "No, my husband is fertile. But many men are not. Have you thought about what happens the day a woman comes and asks for his help to have a baby?"

"Doesn't matter." Luckily, she caught herself before replaying the message in Derek's exact voice. "When I told Derek I couldn't breed with him. That's what he said."

Nina patted her hand. "He's a good man. You'll be happy together."

Cameron hopped up from the bunk. "It's time to check the children."


	6. Chapter 6

**Post-Apocalyptic Honeymoon**

The patrol had been easy for Derek compared to dealing with the scav vendors. They carried a lot useful stuff, knives, ammo, wire and porn, things that could save a man's life, but there wasn't a damn thing spread out on their trading benches, he could hand Cameron to show she meant more than a roll on the floor or a slam against the wall. He may have been fifteen when the bombs fell, but he remembered the basic courtship rituals. Maybe Cameron did too. And, if she didn't, she deserved to learn.

What the hell was he expecting to find? A ring that wasn't impregnated with fallout? Some silk flowers that hadn't been trampled into the mud? He might as well have fantasized that he was going to find champagne and chocolate. There was fifteen year-old MRE cherry cobbler. It was kind of like cake. Then, he saw three small yellow green spheres.

"They're actually food," the scav vendor must have noticed his amazement.

"I know what they are. I'm not that young." Had Cameron ever seen an orange? Did she even know what one was? "Where did you find them?"

"Camp up in the mountains. They got gardens in caves."

Derek thought about the contents of his backpack: knives, ammo, copper wire, iodine tablets. There had to be something the scav needed. "How much?"

There was a commotion at the entrance to the trading area and all heads turned. General Connor! It wasn't unusual for him to move around in the common areas of a bunker, but that didn't mean people took it for granted. People gawked. Crowds parted. John Connor walked straight to him. "Good to see you are still alive, Lieutenant Reese."

"Thank you, sir."Derek replied.

Whenever Derek shook John Connor's hand, he had the strange feeling the General was about to hug him. It must be a subliminal thing from all his years of following the man's orders. Now the glow he had glimpsed in the General's eyes when Kyle came into the picture was a different thing. If he didn't know John Connor was straight, married, and faithful, Derek might honestly worry about his little brother's ass.

Connor's gaze fell on the trading bench. "Oranges? I never knew you liked fruit that much."

"They're for a woman, sir."

John looked at him curiously. "She must really be something for you to go through so much trouble for a hook-up."

"It's not a hook-up, sir. I married her a little over twelve hours ago, sir." _In the mess hall, in front of most of the base, without giving her anytime to prepare, and I'll be lucky if she doesn't throw me out of bed tonight._

Derek Reese remembered his commander's face during the attack when they realized they had taken on twelve HK squadrons instead of four. He remembered the day when they finally reestablished contact with the Asian continent. On neither occasion had the General looked so surprised. He actually hugged Derek like he meant it when he said all humanity was family together fighting the machines.

"Congratulations, Lieutenant. It's about time."

The General handed a small bottle to the scav vendor. "Scotch, twenty-five years old." He turned back to Derek. "Now you've got to let me help you out in other ways, lieutenant."

. . . . .

Nina sent her away from the children's room early. She told Cameron to go back to her bunk and rest before Derek got back because he would probably keep her up most of the evening. And to remember the oil. Everything that humans valued, cars, guns, sex seemed to require oil.

Cameron laid down on the bed. It was true she needed downtime to realign scrambled programming. The things that Derek did with her affected her in a way that combat never had. But it wasn't the same as sleep even if the purple haze behind her closed eyelids was the perfect sign board on which to organize her data chains.

Someone pounded on the door. Kyle was the most likely candidate. She ignored it. Then she heard a voice.

"Mrs. Reese!"

She slide the door open to find Wisher and Sayles. They were both smiling too much which wasn't a good sign.

"You have to come with us, mam," Wisher said taking her by the elbow.

"On whose orders?"

"Derek's," Sayles replied taking her other elbow. "He said we could use restraints."

Had she been discovered? No, that wasn't possible. She had eliminated all means of detection. The jammer blocked the dogs. Her biosystem had been programmed to breath and sweat, to simulate sleep. She ate and shed her waste like humans. Derek Reese, a man who had fucked many human women, fucked her the night before and hadn't detected anything. He claimed it was the best sex he ever had. Unless that was a ruse to confuse her, but his heartbeat hadn't escalated like human heartbeats did when they were lying. His heart beat only escalated when they fucked or sexed or whatever it was suppose to be called.

Her programming was scrambling. Fight her way out or try to trick her way through. She couldn't decide what to do and they were taking her deeper and deeper into the firebase. Light was coming from the safety portals of steel safedoor. She heard non-networked computer noises. The command center for the bunker was near!

A glimpse would be an invaluable data source. It could end the war. But if the war ended, Derek ended and then she would never understand how he scrambled her programming. The anomaly would continue. Her system would never reach perfection.

Derek emerged out of the darkness. He put his arms around her which momentarily stopped the data swirls in her head.

She noticed extreme nervous infliction in Sayles voice when he spoke. "You said bring her here."

"I didn't say scare the shit out of her." Derek's voice was displeased, but not dangerous.

"They said you wanted me in restraints," Cameron said.

Sayles spoke fast. "It seemed like the best man's job, bro." And then more defensively, "It was only a joke."

"Get." was all Derek said in reply

He took her away from the safe door, to the end of the corridor, and slid a key card into the lock. Her night vision scanned only furniture in the darkness beyond. "What is this place?"

"VIP quarters. It's Connor's quarters when he's here. And for the next two days, it's ours." He grabbed her bottom and hoisted her off the floor.

The lights came on as he stepped over the threshold. The room was so exceptionally clean after so many weeks amid Alpha's grime and dirt, it reminded her of a lab, white walls, white ceiling, no dust, nothing out of place and shiny metal furniture.

Derek laid her down on the bed. Instead of climbing on top of her, he unlaced her boots.

"You're face is different."

His check flesh was as pink as hers. "Yeah, I shaved."

"The dust will scratch your face raw on the next patrol." Derek was too good a soldier to make such an illogical decision.

"Better my face than the inside of your thighs." He winked. Winking meant a conspiracy between humans. They had nothing to conspire about involving the inside of her thighs.

"My thighs are not one of your responsibilities."

"We're married. Your body is my business." Gingerly he touched her thighs. His voice grew softer. "Remember the words, for better or worse, in sickness and in health. I don't want to hurt you again."

What was she suppose to say? Once again there was no program option to supply the answer. The only approach was to reply with known facts. "Your face skin is almost as soft as mine."

He took a yellow and green sphere out of his pack. "I got real oranges."

"Orange is a liquid."

His humor smile returned. "That's just the juice."

He cut open the sphere, separated its sections, and slid a piece into her mouth. L-ascorbate! The L-ascorbate her sensors had needed for weeks flooded her biosystem. Maybe this would correct the anomalies. Maybe she wouldn't need to power down so often. Maybe she would even be able to codify the clues in Derek Reese's facial movements.

Probability was low on the last one. His face was different again, more so than she had ever seen it before. He had the humor smile and wide eyes, but not shock. He looked at her as if she was some new weapon.

He brushed his fingers across her cheek. "You like oranges."

She had never heard his voice so soft. She remembered the social rituals. "Do you want some?"

He shook his head. She couldn't understand his eyes.

The L-ascorbate restored some of her energy reserve, but didn't do anything for her programming. The primary mission directives had stalled. Her only objective now was the unknown behind Derek's eyes. Why did making eye contact with him disarm her systems and leave her defenseless? She could fight two T-888s at one time, but she couldn't stop him from tilting her head to one side and kissing her neck. His smooth face made his lips even more conductive to electricity. "Are we going to fuck now?"

"In awhile. Tonight we go slow."

He did move slower than last night. Instead of frantically tugging at her clothes, he undid things piece by piece until he stalled. She wasn't aware humans timed out, but that was the only way to categorize the behavior. He just stopped moving.

"Morales, one of the Amazons, gave it to me. She said I should wear it under my clothes for you." It wasn't a practical garment. It barely covered her. Maybe she needed to do something to reboot him. Dancing had started the initial contact. "I could dance. You liked watching me dance before."

"We don't have any music."

She hopped off the bed, "I remember the music. It's in my head." Good, that was the way a human woman would have said it. Her programming was integrating the new data.

Without her boots, ballet steps flowed more smoothly. The shirt she wore now even resembled the uniform of the dancers, so the reenactment was even more precise. Derek approved. His eyes were the same pattern as when he watched her before. They would be fucking soon. "Did you ever dance like this?"

"The only dance I ever went to was ninth grade a week before Judgment Day. I stood against a wall for three hours along with most of the guys in my class and stared at the girls."

That's what he was doing now except she was only one female and she hadn't been dancing for three hours. "So nothing's changed."

The humor smile. That was frequently a precursor to touching. He grabbed her waist.

"I may never have danced with a woman, but I know how it's done. Put your hands on my shoulders."

She compiled. His heartbeat was elevated, but not high enough yet. His skin was warm. His arms seemed as strong as a combat chassis and her sensors registered the same stability and lack of threat to her system as they would within a fortified complex. He was humming the melody of the music. His memory was almost as good as her recording capacity. Because of the height differences between them, she couldn't see his eyes as well. She stood on her tiptoes and stumbled into him. He caught her; then bent her body lower in a swirl.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"A dip. If we had tango music, it would be appropriate." He explained.

"We don't have any music at all," she pointed out.

"Maybe we can borrow some tomorrow. If we had music, would you dance with me again?"

"I let you fuck me. Why wouldn't I let you dance with me?"

He laughed. Derek didn't laugh often. His hands slide down to her bottom and he picked her up again. She crossed her legs behind his back for leverage.

"You're beautiful. Maybe if I had more education, knew something other than fighting, I would know other things I could say to you right now, but I don't. All I can say is you're beautiful."

In this room no organic randomness distracted from Derek's perfection as a killing machine. His lean body made more efficient use of muscular mass than the bulky T-888. His tattoos were better urban camouflage than pale pink skin. "So are you."

Heat pervaded her system. Heat that her neuro-processors couldn't ignore. Heat that had no logical reason for existing. Random data swirled in her head. Last night some of the heat dissipated when she made contact with Derek. She pushed down one of her straps exposing her breast. He latched on to her immediately. His mouth pulled the heat out of her body, but left something else, a compulsion for more heat, for more of the touch, smell, and taste of his body.

He laid her down on the bed, stripped off his uniform, and in that oasis of white, sterility completely devoid of the chaos of the human war around them, recreated the anomaly that temporarily wiped out the confusion in her sensors and left her system in perfection.

. . . . .

While Cameron slept, Derek lay awake. When he pulled off her uniform, he had been struck speechless. It was just a muscle shirt stitched in places to emphasize the curves of a woman's body, pink thread against blinding white, but she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen! Not the most beautiful thing in the blighted wasteland of a nuclear holocaust. If Judgment Day never happened and the world had gone on progressing into the twenty-first century, colonies could be on the moon, chocolate could cure cancer, and she would still be the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

And he gave her oranges. Yeah, they were probably the rarest thing on the base, but so what. She gave him back his life and all he had for her was fruit. Earlier he wouldn't have believed it possible, but his hatred of the machines had grown. Because of metal he married her wearing a filthy uniform with the smell of sweat and grease all around them, instead of among flowers and sunshine. Because of some circuit boards with too many wires attached, they spent their wedding night in this tiny bare room, the best to be had on the whole base, but smaller than any roadside motel in the world that had been.

There were things he could say to her, but he didn't know how without it sounding stupid. And part of him was afraid that he said those things it would somehow put her in more danger. Fate would lash out at him for daring to have too much hope. One thing he knew for damn sure, he would die to preserve a few more seconds of her or his brother's life.

. . . . . .

Cameron spent two days inside the quarters John Connor stayed in at this foreword command post. She should have searched and scanned every square centimeter of the room. Instead, she let Derek Reese fuck her. Over and over. They didn't even bother to wear clothes. Food was brought to the door. Food of considerably more variety than was usual in their rations. Once she heard Kyle's voice. He brought them something called honey. It was surgically pure glucose. Derek licked it off her most concentrated nerve clusters.

She had reviewed all the files on human sexual behavior, seen the images, and read the manuals humans had created before the war that detail their mating processes. Derek fucked her in positions never cataloged before. Sometimes she fucked him. And when they didn't fuck, they talked about the things humans rarely mentioned.

"Your penis is different from the little boys in the nursery. They have a tube of skin at the tip." Did something happen?" she said. They were laying together waiting for him to recharge. The silence no longer seemed safe.

"Why are you worried about my manhood?"

"We're married. Your body is my business." She slide out from under his arm and went to his waist.

He gazed down on her with another expression she had never seen before. "I'm circumcised. The little tube, it's called a foreskin, was cut off of my manhood."

"Did it hurt?" Oh! That was a stupid question.

"If it did, I don't remember. I was a baby when it happened."

She studied his penis. When not erect, the limb was one of the softest places on this body. She remembered the old files and some of the behavior she had seen in the darker, more private areas of Alpha. She laid her tongue flat against the shaft and made a swirling motion.

"Aiee!" Derek exclaimed. He pulled away from her. "Don't do that?"

She moved back to his side. "Why? Most men like it. You put your mouth on my genitals all the time."

His behavior was defensive. Prisoners acted this way when they were withholding information. She stroked his face in that way he would touch hers that could circumvent so many defensive protocols. "What's wrong?" He stared up at the ceiling. She pressed her lips against his ear. "We're married. Your body is my business. What's wrong?"

"Bad memories." His voice was stone.

"How can pleasure be a bad memory?" That wasn't logical.

"Because it was my high school principal!" His eyes were on fire. Usually he only displayed that level of anger toward Skynet.

Skynet had documented numerous incidents of adult men abusing teenagers in internment camps, but they had little information on its occurrence in humans before the war. Surviving police records said it was an underreported crime. Unfortunately, Derek wasn't going to talk in his current emotional state. She wrapped her arms around his head and continued to stroke his face. "For better or for worse."

His heartbeat slowed slightly. His voice grew lower and very bitter. "My parents thought he was a great positive influence. I use to go over to his house on Saturday morning and he would blow me. At first, it wasn't so bad. He was forty-year old ex-jock, but it was more sex than I was going to get from a girl my age. He never asked me to do him. We never went anal. Then he started talking about Kyle. So, I went to his house that night and set the place on fire. Somehow the cops never connected me with it. That's when I first started getting protective of Kyle. Saw how my parents couldn't protect me, realized I was all my little brother really had."

"If he was going to molest your brother, what else could you do?" Fire had been the best option. Guns were traceable before the war. Knives too risky for an untrained fifteen year old to use against an adult male.

Derek kissed her hard. His lips sucked at her mouth like a vacuum as if he was trying to erase the memories with the electricity they generated together. "You're the only person I ever admitted that to," he said finally.

"For better or for worse," Cameron repeated. She pushed him onto his back and started kissing her way down his chest.


	7. Chapter 7

**Brief, Bright Shining Moments**

At the end of their two days, Cameron walked Derek to Alpha's main hatch. He used to think couples that did that were pathetic. Now he understood. A few hundred meters away a dog growled. He tried not to imagine bad omens.

"There's an alcove out of the way back there," she gestured behind them. "You've got five minutes. We've never had a slam against the wall."

"I want more than five minutes when I'm with you." He kept his mouth closed when he kissed her. "Let me see your tags."

"Why?"

"Don't argue, just gimme."

"Why?" she insisted.

"I want to string my kill patches on it," he explained.

"But, I haven't stopped seven terminators. Why?"

"Because I don't have a ring for you."

Over Cameron's shoulder, Kyle handed him a yellow metal band. His gaze drifted up to his brother. "Do I want to know how you got this?"

"Made it down in the weapons' shop yesterday. Connor gave me the metal."

For this, Derek could almost worship John Connor like Kyle did. He reached for her hand and slid the band on to her finger. Miraculously it fit. "In the time before, in the world that was, a married woman wore a wedding ring. I would have given this during the ceremony."

"Nina told me about weddings. No one does things like that now."

"People do what they can. I want to do what I can."

She looked sad. But Cameron always looked a little sad except when they . . . except when they made love. He tried the words on for size in his head. Okay, it was way too pussy to use around the guys. But later when they were alone, he would explain how he didn't want to use the word fuck to describe having sex with her anymore. He tilted her chin up for one more kiss. "Hey, I'm coming back to you."

. . . . .

From the chattering around Alpha, Cameron detected a shift in the direction the humans were taking toward the war. Everyone whispered secrets inside of secrets. However, her programming appeared to be irreversibly scrambled. Important things were happening, but she had no compulsion to gather and analyze intelligence. Her system issued no directives of military importance. Unless the data she encountered involved Derek Reese, her system didn't seem to register it as important at all.

She had acquired a vast amount of data about Derek. His nipples were as sensitive to touch as hers. Tickling made him squirm. His eyes became methane flames when he was aroused. And when he was aroused he could do things to her biosystem that her neuro-processors couldn't categorize. She had no way of describing it, other than to acknowledge that during those times the compulsion to over stimulate all her nerve clusters overrode all other programming.

Deep in the night, when they should be asleep, he talked to her softly, so Kyle wouldn't hear. From the other Resistance women, she learned a man talking so much, especially after sex, was very unusual. She learned about the nightmares he sometimes had now and all his childhood fears. He told her so many things about his life. She had to spend hours researching human life from the few books available at Alpha and listening in on the conversations of others to construct believable stories about growing up in the bunker with her father.

Humans were so complicated and contradictory. She would never be able to map out all the factors that controlled their actions without expanding her system. The only way to do that was to interface with Skynet's core. But if she did that she would lose Derek Reese because Skynet might gleam enough information from her data files to crush the human resistance or at least inflict damage enough to significantly decrease his chances of survival. And if she lost Derek she would never be able to understand how he was able to align her system for those brief shining moments when perfection was no longer a goal, but a state of being.

When Derek wasn't available, she studied the Amazons. Though male and female integrated fighting units had greater numbers, the Amazons were proportionally the most powerful and successful of the Resistance groups. Acevada taught her about the Amazon's Great Cycle of Life, probably with an eye toward potential recruitment. Acevada also talked about her life before Judgment Day. The Amazon commander had been gang girl in the L.A. barrio, a warrior without a war, who had first learned about discipline guarding stolen cars filled with illegal narcotics.

"It's all part of the Great Cycle, _hermana," _Acevada said. "I learned to fight other humans first. It prepared me for this. We're a thousand times more deadly than any machine."

Sometimes she sparred with Acevada careful not to reveal her true strength. Many of the Amazons' fighting techniques were similar to Terminator fighting programs. Even though Derek swore he didn't want his wife turning into an Amazon soldier, she could tell he was glad when she demonstrated fighting skills. She knew he worried about her and she could finally map one of the unknowns behind the emotional response of worry in humans. Humans worried when they decided the termination of another human would negatively affect not only their physical, but their emotional health also. And she was important to Derek Reese's emotional health. Her nerve clusters became unusually active whenever that data came to the forefront of her neuro-processors.

There was light inside their quarters which meant Kyle was there. Derek never used the crank lantern. However when she slid back the door Derek was the only one there which was odd. He shouldn't be here in their quarters at this time either. He looked worried and uncomfortable. It occurred to her that something could be tragically wrong with Kyle. Kyle could even be terminated. If that occurred she could no longer study the Reese boys and Derek would be more difficult to study also. He might be unwilling to provide the sexual activities that produced the anomaly for quite awhile if he was upset over losing his brother. For the first time in her existence, Cameron could connect the concept of worry with her own biosystem.

"Where's Kyle?" she asked.

"Hanging out with the rest of the squad."

She remembered the importance of camaraderie to human morale. "You should go hang out to. They're your men."

Derek reached for her. "I'll head up to the ready room later. Right now, I want to spend some time with you." He pulled her unto his lap.

She started to unbutton her shirt. Her biosystem craved the physical release of the anomaly.

He stopped her. "Not that. Hopefully that later. There's something important we need to talk about."

"What?" Since they were married, he claimed to want no other partner except her, so why would he pass up an opportunity to have sex.

He gazed into her eyes; then looked away. He rubbed his eyebrows and finally returned to her. "This is harder than I thought. I don't want to do this, but we have to think about evacuating you to someplace safer."

"Why? Have I done something wrong?" He couldn't have discovered her true nature. That would have been solved with grenades. It must be something else, a human problem. Maybe he was bored with her and wanted sex with different women. In the past he had certainly not been monogamous. "You want me to leave?"

"No! I don't want you to ever leave me!" His eyes were the same as the morning after they first had sexual intercourse: wild, desperate, and something else, something she couldn't describe. He stroked her shoulder. "We have to think about what's for the best. Since we've been having sex together, you haven't had your cycle."

It took several seconds for her neuro-processors to retrieve the data necessary for her to understand what he was saying. He was referring to a menstrual cycle: the monthly shedding of blood that fertile human women experienced, some said endured, unless there were fertilized ovum attached to their uterine walls. Derek thought she was pregnant. He had said he would send her to Crystal Peak if she got pregnant. That was John Connor's headquarters. Infiltration there was the greatest possible intelligence triumph. But it would mean leaving Derek, leaving the anomaly unexplained. If she left now, she would never understand how he could disable her defensive protocols or bring about those brief periods of perfection to her system.

She got up from his lap. "It's not what you think. The only time my vagina has bled was the first time we made love. I've never had cycles." She recognized sadness in his eyes without having to ask. "I told you I couldn't breed with you. I told you that morning."

He kissed her hand and pulled her back. "And I told you it doesn't matter."

Her system was gaining accuracy at predicting human thought patterns. "But you wanted to have a baby with me?"

He lay back on the bed and pulled her down on top of him. "It's not important."

"The Amazons sometimes have babies for their sisters. At least, that's what they call it. One sister is the physical mother of the baby, but another is considered the actual mother. It's no different from when you impregnate a woman married to an infertile man. I know none of the Amazons has ever used you as a stud, but if I asked."

"No, there's plenty of my DNA in the gene pool already. It just made me feel good thinking there might be a kid out there that was part of both of us." His eyes were still sad, too sad to be of much use to anyone right now.

She wanted him to be happy, if only for a few minutes, so she undid her shirt slowly, the way she had learned he liked to watch her undress. The cool air caused her nipples to pucker. She leaned over him placing her hands on either side of his head.

His eyes changed. "What are you doing?"

She knew he knew exactly what she was doing, but this was a ritual like a code sequence, Derek had created in the days after he asked her to stop calling it fucking when they were alone together. She kissed the top of his forehead letting her chest dip low against him. "Teasing you."

"No need to tease me just say the words."

She felt his hands on her chest. Electricity ran down her spine. "Make love to me."

He flipped them over effortlessly. Sadness had disappeared from his face and been replaced with a smile. "I love making love to you."

"I . . I,"

"What?" His eyes were flames. "Do you want to say it again? Do you want me to say it again?"

She shook her head. She knew what needed to be said, but it made no logical sense. Still, she was compelled to say it. "I wish I could have a baby with you."

The anomaly roared between them. There were no model numbers or missions. Her programming was hopelessly lost in the chaos of Derek Reese's body. In his arms she didn't remember the rest of the world. She barely remembered herself. There was only the two of them a single pulse of energy burning in the darkness.

. . . . .

Then the day came when only Kyle came back from a mission. "There was an HK attack. We got separated. I saw them grab Derek and Wisher."

She didn't need to calculate what to do. She grabbed her young brother-in-law's hands while he fought back tears. Sumner put his hand on her shoulder. She understood, it wasn't sexual.

"We'll get him back, mam. Derek is the toughest bastard I know. He'll hang tight and keep Wisher sane until we can bring them both back."

"John Connor is concentrating resources on Topanga Canyon. Besides, it would be foolish to risk so many others for two men." No sooner had she spoke those words than she regretted them. At a time like this, humans needed comforting, not stark reality.

"I'll convince him we need to go for Derek. I escaped Century City with Connor." Kyle declared.

Cameron knew the probability was low that a guerrilla commander as effective as John Connor would divert firepower and resources to rescue two men, but she nodded. Maintaining Kyle's morale was more important. Sumner left and Kyle collapsed against her sobbing. She slide the door closed and held him in the darkness. He cried until her shirt was slick with tears: one-thousand, seven-hundred and eighty-three seconds.

"I lost Derek before when I got sent to Century City. John Connor reunited us. But I don't think another miracle is going to happen." When he turned on the lantern his eyes burned with the same strength as his brother. "Don't worry, Cameron. I'll keep us together. We're always going to be family."

She stroked his shoulders. "One day you'll find the woman of your dreams, whoever that is, and you'll be happy again."

Kyle smiled, but it wasn't the smile humans associated with happiness. "The one I want, I'll never get. But you'll always be my sister."

She coaxed him to lay down on the bed and tried to pay attention while he talked about his brother's bravery, his friendship with John Connor, and how the machines weren't so tough. There were ways to dust them.

Her programming analyzed the data. Two Resistance soldiers found after a battle would have been terminated on the site rather than transported to the Century City Disposal Facility. Therefore, if Derek and Sayles had been taken captive they would have been taken to a research facility. Van Neys wasn't likely. That facility only requested child lab subjects. Melrose only wanted women of breeding age. The facility at Echo Park took healthy males. If Derek was alive he would be there.

Finally Kyle went to sleep. She calculated the feasibility of leaving him a note. But what could she say? _Don't worry. I'm going to bring your_ _brother back. Since,_ _I'm a Terminator, they'll let me inside the Echo Park Research Station_. She would never even get beyond Alpha, so there could be no note. Instead, she slipped off the bed without a sound. Her Resistance uniform would not be cause for alarm at Echo Park. Many Terminators had similar costumes for infiltration. However, they didn't wear jewelry, so she couldn't explain the wedding ring. She left it on the lantern handle. Kyle would find it and know she had gone and maybe, just maybe he wouldn't panic, but only think she had chose suicide in some grand act of romantic depression. He was the type.

No one stopped her in the corridors. Of course, death and captured comrades were not unusual happenings at Alpha. If they knew about her situation they probably thought she was going to find a shoulder to cry on or a bottle to crawl into. So, she was able to move easily though a grungy firebase filled with weapons and dirt where people knew her name and no one had once reminded her that she was an incomplete model.

Acevada was sitting at the west hatch. The dogs had been taken somewhere and it was only the two of them. The Amazon Major put down the book she had been reading. Cameron recognized it as one of the philosophy theses the Amazons had created since Judgment Day. Obviously Acevada had been waiting for her. Her one eye swept over Cameron not as male human did, but almost like some of the younger soldiers looked at John Connor's picture. "So, do I have to kill you now?"

Acevada didn't give Cameron time to respond. She undid her plasma rifle and strapped it across Cameron's shoulders. "Full range, full power cell." She stuffed two more cells into Cameron's blouse. She gave Cameron her grenades, phosphorus explosives, and a very old nine millimeter.

"How? Why?" This was beyond anything her programming could comprehend, beyond anything that happened to her among the humans. "How can you know? Why are you doing this?"

"The Great Cycle has has no ending and no beginning, all just is." It was the core belief of the Amazons. Acevada's gaze was hard, unwavering. "Who do you think trained me?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Metal Bitch**

He was in the alternative universe again where the machines never arose. It was a California Christmas back at his parents' house. No snow outside, but they had a flocked white tree glowing with jewel lights. The pictures on the mantel were amazing: Mom and Dad at their twenty-fifth anniversary party, Kyle graduating with honors, and Cameron and him on their wedding day. He had worn a dress uniform and she had a real bridal gown of spotless white with lots of lace and there had been flowers in her hair and her hands. He felt the heat of another person against his back. Slender, but strong arms encircled his waist.

"I'm sorry about the CD," Cameron said.

Earlier that morning he had unwrapped a double-album of classical opera from Cameron and pretended it was the perfect gift.

"I planned to give you something a lot better since your parents and Kyle would be there also, but I lost my nerve."

He turned to face her. "What was it?"

Her eyes sparkled. She pulled his hand inside the waist of her jeans down to her warm, smooth stomach.

He traced her belly button with his thumb. "Glad you didn't give me this in front of everyone. Can I have my gift tonight?"

"No, in seven months."

In a split second, he understood what she was saying. He had thought their lives were perfect. The world was safe. His family was safe and they were married. But this went beyond all previous perfection. He couldn't say what he felt in words, so he kissed her.

"Get a room you two."

Derek looked over Cameron's shoulder and saw Kyle, not a hardened guerrilla soldier, but just his little brother. "You're going to be an uncle!"

"Congratulations Cameron! Who is the father?"

Suddenly the room began to shake. He reached for Cameron. He reached for Kyle. But they were pulled from his grasp. Everything became too bright; then too black. He blinked and opened his eyes onto the living hell that was the world that was. His parents were dead. Kyle might be. And he was chained to the floor of a Skynet prison camp.

The tattoo on his arm still burned. He was branded, Skynet meat. Hell that was probably how they got skin and flesh to cover the Terminators. Now he realized why Kyle could talk, even brag, about his escape from Century City, but he never referred to the tattoo.

How long had he been here? A day and a night at least. Six Skynet patrols had flown overhead, but this wasn't on the regular route for them. Intermittently he had been hearing music since he had been chained up. Music could only remind him of Cameron and the way she brought back the world that had been. Unfortunately the only reason he could imagine the machines would ever play music was as part of softening them up for torture.

"Do you think he's telling the truth?" Timms asked.

"Who?"

"Wisher."

Derek looked back at the unconscious man who had fought beside him for five years. "Who knows? Wisher is tough, but torture can break anyone."

A T-600 stomped back into the room. In addition to its shredded face, this one seemed to have damage to its endoskeleton. Its movements were stiff and jerky. Derek hoped to utilize that weakness at the earliest opportunity. It might be enough to overpower the machine long enough for one man to escape, one man that could bring back help.

The machine unlocked his chain and hoisted him to his feet. It took him below, where the music came from, down to the basement that broke Billy Wisher. The metal pushed him forward into a dark room. He could hear mechanical sounds all around. There were two T-888s, a lot of lab equipment, and many vials of blood. He felt a soft hand on his arm and whirled around,

Cameron! Fear froze the breath in his lungs until ice shards stabbed all this internal organs.

"I'm sorry," she said.

It was dangerous for the machines to know about the relationships between people because they would use that information against captives, so he had to be careful. Except he couldn't treat Cameron like a stranger now, not when she was terrified and worried, her eyes wild like some animal caught in a trap. He grabbed her trembling hands.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"It's okay." He knew what happened without her saying a word. Wisher had spilled everything he knew including the location and access points of Firebase Alpha. The machines had overran them, captured Cameron, and now they were brought together again in this nightmare surroundings. "I'll get us out of here," he whispered. "Haven't figured out how yet, but stay strong. I'll get us out of here."

If he could keep them alive for awhile, he could find a way for them to escape. Or for Cameron to escape! There really wasn't any decision to make. He would die to keep her alive. At least she had no visible wounds. Obvious wounds meant instant death with Skynet. A medical monitor band had been attached to her forehead, but other than that it didn't appear they had tampered with her physically. Of course, mentally was another matter. Something was wrong, very wrong, more than just the fear and disorientation of capture.

Cameron wouldn't look at his face. Her face was ash. She stared at the floor. Her hands awkwardly twisted against his. "They want you to have sex with me. They want to study it."

To survive he had to rape his own wife! How else could sex under those circumstances be described accept as rape? Because the machines lacked human emotions, but he never thought they were capable of calculating this degree of psychological cruelty. "Did they make the other men have sex with you?"

"No."

Thank God! He didn't know if he could have kept his rage under control long enough to figure out an escape, knowing she had been raped so many times, especially by men he knew, even if Sayles and Wisher probably would have had Skynet rifles pointed at their head the whole time. The first T-888 attached a monitor band to his forehead. The second started cutting away Cameron's clothes.

"You don't have to do that. I can get sexual access with her still dressed." What he had to do was bad enough. Further degradation would be beyond obscene. He moved closer. "I can do this fast like breeding sex."

She shook her head and met his gaze for the first time. "No, do it the way we always do. It may be the last time . . ."

He crushed her against his chest. She didn't need to finish. He knew what was at stake. This could be the last time they would ever make love. And it was a cold and horrible way for the last time to be happening, but since it was all they might have, and a lot more than most people got, they should wring whatever moments were possible in this unforgiving hell of a world the machines had created.

He pulled off his jacket and handed it to her. "I don't want to take you on the floor."

"There's a bed." She gestured to an old hospital bed.

For a second he wondered what kind of sick research the machines conducted at this camp. He took her to the bed. It was clean, at least, no sign of other experiments. The room was dark, but he could see the machines' evil little eyes glowing nearby.

He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, and worked his way around to her ears. "Always remember no matter what they do to you, no matter what they make you do, it's not your fault."

She nodded. "You should remember the same."

He slid his hand inside her shirt. Her body seemed almost mystical at this moment with a strength he couldn't comprehend. He could see the fear in her eyes, but didn't feel it in her chest, only warmth and the steady beat of her heart. He regretted all the times he had rushed exploring her. Delicately he licked the soft beads around one nipple while his hand massaged the other one. "You always remind me of raspberries," he confessed. Why the hell had he never said that to her before now?

"Raspberries?" she asked.

"Something sweet from the world before."

He sucked gently drawing out the tiny moans deep in Cameron's throat until she was pushing him against her demanding more. He licked down her stomach. She squirmed when he dipped his tongue into her belly button. It was a little like their first time. They had made love with their clothes on then also. But this time, he would make her so ready and wet; she would be nearly to a climax with his first thrusts. He had brought Cameron to multiple orgasms in the past, but tonight this had to be enough so she could survive whatever happened when the machines were through with him.

Impatiently she tugged on his shoulders. Her eyes were amber flames.

He kissed her finger tips. "I got to taste you." He made her come until his jaw ached, until sweat plastered her hair in sticky ropes across her throat, and probably until the prisoners chained upstairs could hear her moans and wonder exactly how bad the torture below was going to be.

She ran her hands under his shirt and tweaked his nipples. His relations with women in the past had always been fast slams with little time for experimentation. Until Cameron, he had never known he liked having his nipples played with, the rougher the better. He remembered the night they discovered that about him: the way her eyes had glowed and the smile that crinkled up her nose. His rage against the machines was temporarily pushed aside. He leaned over her and lifted his shirt up to his armpits. Her tongue touched him gentle at first, like she always did, then slowly her teeth made contact until she suckled him against their sharp points forcing breath out of lungs in great, ragged gasps.

He pulled her away from his chest and moved so he could whisper in her ear, hopefully soft enough so the machines couldn't intrude on this moment. He had to say it before it was too late. "I love you! I'm sorry; I haven't said it before now."

She gazed up at him with confused eyes. "You talk about making love before sex all the time."

"It's not the same. Well, maybe it's close, but it's not the same. And I need to say it the right way. I love you, Cameron."

Her mouth sealed over his. She undid his pants, found his manhood, and pulled him into that sweet dark center of her where he forgot about the machines, the war, and all his hate. He was burning alive and soaring toward the core of the universe. Every movement in her silken depths pulsed through this body like a laser blast. _If there is a heaven, please God let it be like this_.

Time stopped in her eyes as if through telepathy she could see that alternative universe where they lived, loved and grew old together. Her arms went tight around him. He felt her lips against his ear and then the faintest whisper. "I love you too."

Before the sex was completely over the machines tore him away from her. Of course, he wasn't in much of a condition to protest. Then he saw the T-888 leaning over Cameron with a scalpel! "No! We did what you said! You can't hurt her!"

The T-888 turned Cameron's head to the side.

Adrenalin shot through his body and reason left it. "She doesn't know anything! I'm the one that can tell you stuff!" He lunged toward the T-888, but the T-600 held him down. "Let her go and I'll tell you whatever you want! I'll give you Connor!" Nothing else mattered in this universe for him and if a deal with the devil was the only way she would survive; he was ready to sell his soul. "I'm your best shot at getting him. Let her live and I'll give you John Connor!"

Then the bottom dropped out of his universe sending him spiraling. The T-888 sliced open Cameron's temple, peeled back her flesh and extracted her programming chip!

She was a fucking machine! He would have died for her! He would have betrayed the entire human race for her! And she was a fucking machine!

Suddenly the T-600 wasn't as strong as he thought it was. A supernova of rage pushed even more adrenalin into his muscles as the darkest blackest hate he had ever known pumped inside him. The other machines, they only wanted to take his life. This metal bitch almost took his soul.

For a moment he broke free of the T-600, but escape was no longer an option. He attacked the T-888 hoping to destroy her chip. Destroy the chip and the metal bitch was destroyed along with her records of their past. But he wasn't fast enough, not for a T-888 in prime condition, and certainly not strong enough to take on well-armed model. Pain tore through his body. As consciousness slipped away from him, he hoped it was death.


	9. Chapter 9

**The Fate Cameron Made (a.k.a How Derek Got Out of Skynet's Clutches)**

Her report should have been accepted without the need for additional evidence. Instead, the two T-888s at the Echo Park Research Facility, Z5274X and B6129Q, asked her to demonstrate the behavior anomalies she had observed with Derek Reese. The logical error deepened when her sensors registered distress. A mere demonstration of observed human behavior should not have been interpreted as a threat in her programming. Except it had been. Warning sensors ran as shrill as nuclear wind through her neuro-processors and her system disarray compounded.

Her sensors registered further distress when she detected the mixture of fear and anger the request produced in Derek. Although privacy was preferred, being observed in sexual activity was not uncommon for residents of Firebase Alpha, and certainly not unknown for Derek. However, observation by the T-888s produced an anger in him that went beyond his usual hatred for Skynet. She couldn't categorize his fear at first. He seemed unconcerned about his own safety. All his actions, all his emotional reactions and the thoughts he expressed had centered on her until the very end. At that point his emotional reactions returned to a predictable pattern. His behavior on discovering her true nature had been exactly as her programming predicted. Z5274X and B6129Q had used tasers until he was unconscious.

Afterwards she couldn't move. No matter how many commands she directed to her limbs, her endoskeleton remained frozen in place, but she could hear and see! She saw her chip on the lab table in front of her! Her sensors had recorded it being removed from her biosystem, but she had assumed that was a false recording created by scrambled programming. Nothing was suppose to happen with her chip removed! The chip controlled her programming and circuits. It was suppose to be all that was of her. Yet, somehow her neuro-processing unit continued to function. Programming persisted, except she could not move!

If her neuro-processing existed beyond the chip, full integration with Skynet's core would not complete her. But if integration with Skynet's core would not align her systems, what would? The scrambled programming began when she made contact with Derek Reese. Exposure to him induced brief periods of stability also. Sublime stability, in his arms her mechanical and organic components integrated into a perfection unknown before.

Cameron detected the voices of the two T-888s.

"There is no apparent flaw in this model's neuro-processors, nor is anything abnormal enough in the human to cause the phenomenon described." Z5274X said.

"This field equipment could be too primitive to detect advanced nanotechnology," B6129Q suggested.

Z5274X dismissed this possibility. "The humans are not capable of that technological level anymore. This model was an experimental. It will have to be further refined."

"I concur, but the behavior observed certainly merits further study." B6129Q said.

"It is a very common behavior pattern among humans. Research in the work camps has uncovered numerous instances. It appears to be the most frequent unnecessary behavior humans engage in." Z5274X stated.

"But it is unusual behavior for one of our models. Behavior that merits further study." B6129Q reiterated.

Why wasn't B6129Q automatically deferring to the program of Z5274X? It was the higher ranking free standing unit. There were more logical inconsistencies to solve here than she had data strings to store evidence.

"At this time, other subjects have higher priority."

B6129Q did not offer further alternative actions. However his actions were illogical when he returned the chip to her biosystem. His fingers lingered too long on her body. It was reminiscent of human behavior; behavior that had it been attempted by any man other than Derek, would have resulted in the dislocation of his shoulder. But when she sat up from the examination table B6129Q had already left the laboratory.

She went to Derek. He was still unconscious on the floor. However, if she tried to help him with Z5274X in the room, it might lead to his termination. Derek was strong. He could survive a little longer.

"A more thorough inventory of his components will be made at the Encino Facility," Z5274X said.

All Cameron's distress sensors fired at once. Encino was vivisection facility! Skynet's war against humanity meant Derek Reese's death. It meant extinguishing the phenomena that brought the greatest clarity to her existence. Faced with such possible outcomes, logic determined only one feasible course of action.

She went to the lab table where they had laid out her uniform and equipment from Alpha.

"It is an illogical assortment of tools," Z5274X said. He held up the K-bar Acevada had given her. "Do the humans actually believe knives are effective against us?"

She took the knife from his hands. "It is an efficient tool for other activities. Because it resembles their earliest weapons it has great psychological value to the humans."

Z5274X nodded. His gaze returned to the other items on the tray.

"Of course, in close combat knives can be very effective." She jammed the K-bar into Z5274X's temple. With so much kinetic energy behind it the steel blade smashed through the steel-coltran alloy of his head plate and shattered the chip within. All movement by Z5274X ceased in 1.75 seconds.

She went to Derek, slapped his cheeks to revive him, and pushed a glucose vial against his lips. "Drink this. It will help you recover."

His bloodshot eyes were filled with rage. "You metal bitch!"

"I'm your wife. You need to drink this. It will help you recover." She poured glucose into his mouth; then, stroked his face.

He spat the liquid at her. "Crazy fucking metal bitch! I didn't know metal went crazy!"

She tried to give him more glucose. He twisted his head away from her. She could hold him down, but that wouldn't be conductive to the behavior she wanted. "You have to keep your strength up. I have a plan to get us out of here, but you have to stay strong."

"I'm going to take you apart piece by piece. I'll tear you into fucking scraps so small the ants can't find them!"

This time she used her superior strength to force glucose down his throat. "I'm your wife. Remember." She used her replay feature and repeated his vows in his exact voice. "I, Derek Thomas Reese, take you, Cameron Phillips, to be my wife for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part, I do."

He turned white; then red again. "You're not alive!"

"That's not a logical statement. You wanted to trade John Connor's life for mine," she reminded him. "You said you loved me." She replayed his voice. "And I need to say it the right way. I love you, Cameron."

"Metal bitch!" He dived for the taser, but she was faster. She would always be faster. Of course, that didn't mean he would always have to defer to her programming.

She heard a knock at the door. Another programming chain realigned with perfect clarity. Twenty 600s were assigned to this research facility. It would take 3 minutes and 57 seconds to extract and destroy each chip; then move the de-activated shell out of the scan line of the next 600. Other Terminators would not be sent to this research facility for at least 24-hours.

She opened the door. There were two 600s. Even better. It would be easy, so very easy. 600s didn't expect other Terminators to give them false information. They were not that advanced. After that only B6129Q was a potential problem, but remembering its actions upon re-implanting her chip, she knew she could outwit it. The behavior was too similar to human males for her infiltration programs not to work on it. She directed the lower ranking model to return Derek upstairs; then issued orders to the remaining 600. "New data on the humans must be uploaded to your processing units. Have all free standing units report to the lab."

. . . .

A few clicks from the Echo Park, she found an Amazon patrol. "Alpha has to be evacuated."

Acevada's eye didn't waver. "It's already been hit. Don't think it was because of you. They used the same route Billy Wisher always did bringing in a patrol."

"Losses?"

"No more than average. We evacuated most of our relics to Firebase Foxtrot."

Did anything ever faze Acevada? "What about my brother-in-law, Kyle Reese? Do you know what happened to him?" Finding Kyle would be useful in appeasing Derek's anger.

"He went with Connor," Acevada said.

"Can you take me to John Connor? I have to speak with him alone." This time it was a personal request, not a general question to all the Amazons.

"Not easy, but it can be done."

Cameron's gaze met the unblinking eye. "Do you want to win the war or not?"

Five hours later, they were at Firebase Foxtrot. Unlike Alpha, it was an organized military command center with a level of military bureaucracy almost pre-war. In the sea of clean uniforms and faces that surrounded John Connor, Commander Perry recognized her however.

"Cameron, thank God, you're alive!" He hugged her, not exactly proper military protocol, but not unacceptable either. She was still a pretty woman in a world where that was rare.

"I need to see General Connor," Cameron said.

"General Connor is a busy man. He can't stop to comfort every widow." Perry said.

"I'm not a widow," Cameron replied. She took the new blade Acevada had given her from her belt, slashed open her chest, and extracted the jammer. The dogs at the door went wild. She shoved the bloody jammer on Perry. "Unless your techs can figure out a way to neutralize these all your shelters will soon be vulnerable to Terminator attacks. Now take me to General Connor."


	10. Chapter 10

**New Realities**

Like most survivors, Derek Reese considered Judgment Day, when the machines made Hell a burning, choking reality; the worst life had to offer. The day he discovered the woman he loved, the only sane reason he had for staying alive, was a goddamn machine had recently superseded that in horror. But life wasn't through torturing him yet. The day he found out that metal bitch who had lied to his face, killed his friends, and fucked him over body and soul was now the darling pet machine of the entire fucking Resistance won hands down for the worst possible day in his entire, miserable, shit-sucking life.

It didn't matter who he tried to warn about her. They all seemed mesmerized by the lying, two-faced metal bitch. Perry was one of the worst. Maybe he still fantasized about fucking her. At least, that was the only reason; Derek could think his old commander wasn't ready to help him smash that metal bitch back to whatever hell a machine could be sent to.

"Cameron's different," Perry said sitting down next to him in the mess hall.

"Yeah, twice the evil at half the weight." This was not a conversation he wanted to have with anyone.

Perry continued. "You know, before they wiped her memory, she wrote you a letter."

"Already burned it."

"You should have read it," Perry said.

Derek felt the hair on the back of his neck bristling. He should have realized even if he did not read that letter plenty of other people would. Judging from the look on the other officer's face, Perry knew he had realized that now also.

"It was the first time we have ever had clear window into how that level of machine intelligence makes decisions," Perry said.

"Congratulations," Derek picked up his tray. The Hell with getting a full stomach, he needed to find someplace where there weren't any people and maybe he could purge her from his mind.

Perry stood up also. "I was surprised at how un-alien it was. It was almost like something my little sisters would have wrote."

"They write a lot before the machines killed them?" Derek retorted.

Perry continued undaunted. "What does it mean when she says she wishes she could fling herself into the sea to die? Water won't stop a Terminator."

_The Little Mermaid flung herself into the sea because she was cut off from her people. No, that wasn't the complete story; the Little Mermaid flung herself into the sea because she didn't get her prince._ He certainly wasn't a prince and he certainly wasn't going to tell Perry or Connor that back-story either.

Derek gazed over at Perry. He had to give to man an explanation. "What does it mean? That metal can go crazy. She's nothing, but malfunctioning circuits. Somebody needs to take her apart before she destroys us all."

Sayles was next. Derek had expected more loyalty from his men, but Sayles had always been an idiot. They were all suppose to be studying hard to refamiliarize themselves with the early twenty-first century, but Sayles walked in, the most idiotic, adolescent expression of wonder on his face and he started talking about her. "I saw Cameron!"

"So have I." Derek hoped his voice was dark enough to end the conversation.

Apparently, it wasn't. "When she was at Alpha that was training, right? Connor ordered you and Kyle to test if a reprogrammed machine could pass for human? We didn't know, but you knew she was a machine all the time, right?"

Sumner got up from his bunk and went to Sayles. "I found a new circuit pattern you need to memorize."

"I've been in the electronics library for six hours. My brain's fried." Sayles said.

Sumner tugged on Sayles arm. "There's some prime porno bundled in the same file. Come on."

After they left, Derek glanced over at Timms. So far, most people had been polite, but he knew the rumors swirling around behind his back. _Reese fell for a Terminator. No, not the Reese that escaped from Century with Connor, the other one. He thought it was a real woman and fucking married the thing_. At this point getting into a fight would be a relief. "If you got something to say, say it now."

Timms shook his head. "I don't know your story. I don't know hers."

"It doesn't have a story. It's a fucking machine."

Timms nodded. The guy was a good balance to Sayles's impulsiveness, but sometime he was just too damn calm.

"She is pretty though. First time I saw her, I thought she was an angel." Timms said.

Lying bitch! So, she had fucked all the other guys in that Skynet camp. Why did it even matter that she had sex with Timms and Billy Wisher? Except something in the pit of his stomach filled with rage and loathsome pain at the thought. At least, he knew she hadn't fucked Sayles. Sayles could not have kept his mouth shut about that. "So, you saw her in the basement too?"

"No, later after the rubber faces started disappearing. I thought I was dying. Hell, I was praying for it. Opened my eyes and she was there. I thought she was an angel coming to take me away. She placed her hand over my mouth, laid that axe down next to you and whispered for me to wake you when she had left the building. Like I said, don't know your story, and don't know hers."

Cameron had left the axe! Derek remembered the last conversation between them. _I have a plan to get us out of here, but you have to stay strong!_ It had to be some kind of trap. Cameron had been able to fake human for months. Who knows how complicated their programming was now and what they were capable of?

His gaze went back to Timms. "She's laying some sort of trap. Whatever you do don't trust her."

Sleep pulled him into the dream world again only it wasn't the alternate universe of life without the machines, but someplace entirely new. He was naked, but cleaner than he had ever been since before Judgment Day. Billowing white curtains surrounded him, but there was a pure blue sky overhead and soft grass underneath his feet.

Kyle walked through the curtains. He was wearing a pair of spotless white pants with a matching shirt. "Hey, bro. I brought you some clothes."

Derek embraced his brother. "You're alive!"

"No, and neither are you anymore."

"What!"

Kyle offered him a set of white clothes. Derek's hands were shaking. His brother helped him dress.

"When that HK attack got me, you ran right in after, so they got you also." Kyle explained.

"No, I was in a Skynet camp." He glanced down at this arm. There was no tattoo!

Kyle started combing Derek's hair. "That wasn't a Skynet camp. That was Purgatory."

Purgatory! Where every man paid for his crimes and faced his ultimate nightmare. And his had been discovering the wife he dearly loved was a machine. But if that had been Purgatory; then, what he thought he found out about Cameron hadn't been real! Cameron was human after all! She might even be . . .

"Cameron?"

"After the H-Ks got us a wave of Terminators took Alpha." Kyle said. He put the comb in his pocket. "Come on, she's waiting for you."

Kyle held one curtain aside. Derek walked outside into soft light and clean and crisp air. The forest around them was perfect, a thousand shades of green all blending together. He could see other groups of people greeting each other. At a distance there seemed to be buildings, fantastical buildings, which would have been dreams even in the twenty-first century without the machines.

Cameron came to him. She wore a white dress, kind of like a sundress, but long enough to be a bridal gown. Her hair hung like silk against her shoulders. She laid her soft hands on either side of his face. "My love," she said.

"My love," he whispered back. For the second time since Judgment Day, Derek felt tears in his eyes, but now it was safe to cry.

"Don't be sad," Cameron said. She pulled his head down and kissed the edges of his eyes. "Don't be sad. We'll be together for eternity."

He wrapped his arms around her. "What do we do for eternity?"

"This is Paradise. We don't have to do anything, but enjoy being. Houses can be built by just as much work as you enjoy. Or we could stay with your parents or my parents?" She explained.

"You've seen them?" Derek asked in awestruck wonder.

"Of course, our families choose to make their houses side-by-side."

He kissed her. Her mouth was the remedy for whatever hurt and sadness was left in his body. "I want to meet your parents first. I got to thank them for you. I got to ask them to give me retro-active permission to marry you. I want to have another marriage ceremony where everything is beautiful and your father can walk you down the aisle." He picked her up in his arms the way a groom carried a bride across the threshold. He would carry her all the way if she would let him. "You said their houses are side-by-side; maybe, I can build something between them. Would you like that?"

Cameron smiled. Everytime she smiled he fell in love with her all over again.

"But what are we going to do about Kyle?" Derek asked.

"Kyle doesn't stay with your parents. He stays with an older woman named Sarah."

Derek had to throw back his head and laugh. Sarah Connor and his little brother! Only in Heaven. She was his brother's dream, but he wondered how Kyle fit into Paradise for the founding mother of the Resistance. Something else occurred to him, if Kyle was with Sarah Connor right now; then, John Connor was probably still alive on earth which meant the Resistance would survive. The machines would be defeated. The human race would go on, but his war was over and he would spend eternity with the woman he loved.

Cameron took him back to her parents' house into a bedroom more soft and frilly than any of his fantasies of a romantic place to be with her. She unbuttoned his shirt.

He caught her hand and raised it to his lips. "Shouldn't I meet your family first?"

She kissed a scar on his chest. The scar disappeared. "They know about you. They know you love me. This way when you meet my family, I'll be glowing?"

He could feel her smile through the kiss they shared. They did not have to rush anymore. No machines lurked outside the door waiting to kill them. Time was infinite now. Soon all their clothes were discarded. His lips glided over her silky skin lingering over those sweet spots that brought her the highest pleasure. And she did the same for him, spinning out his nerves into a rainbow of sensation.

He woke up panting hard. Sweat and semen drenched the fresh sheet that had been stretched over the cot he slept on. Damn her! Damn her to where ever machines could be eternally tormented. He tried to forget how it had felt to be with her, but, unfortunately, his memory couldn't be erased. He knew what she was! But no matter how hard he tried he couldn't stop dreaming that somehow someway, he could still be with her. Damn her! Damn whatever machines had made her.


	11. Chapter 11

**Secrets to Keep**

Cameron had observed Derek sitting on the West Balcony for 2.57 hours, but she still could not categorize his behavior. The West Balcony was a good place to observe activities at Firebase Foxtrot. The floor below was the intersection of all major hallways and the largest general assembly area on the base. But Derek didn't appear to be interested in anything occurring near him. For someone that was uncomfortable with absolute quiet, the West Balcony could be a good place to study because it was relatively isolated. But Derek had barely looked at the magazines he had brought with him. Perhaps he had refused to participate in John Connor's time travel project? That wasn't probable. Kyle Reese had been sent back already and Derek would do whatever was necessary to watch over his little brother. So why was he sitting there, arms propped on the lower guard rail, legs dangling over the side of the West Balcony, staring into nothing?

They hadn't really spoken since the Echo Park Skynet camp. When he saw her again for the first time he tried to shoot her. She had expected that, but not the dark fury she heard in his voice whenever he pronounced the word metal. When the reprogrammed B6129Q went on his rampage and she saved his life, he refused to engage her in conversation. He moved away before she could reach for him. And her biosystem had ached to touch him in the aftermath of that disaster. Her sensors had detected him trembling. That was so unusual in Derek. She wanted to reassure him that everything was safe. _I won't ever let anything damage you. I will destroy Skynet to keep us together._ John Connor told her not to say that to Derek. He said it would be bad for Derek's morale.

There was a point when John Connor sent her to bring him to the lab when she thought there was a glimmer of a change. For the first 0.27 seconds after he noticed she was standing by his bunk, there wasn't hostility in his eyes. It was pleasure almost the beginning of desire. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if instead of taking him to Connor, she sat down on the bunk, pulled his hand inside her blouse, and said. "Make love to me."

The younger Amazons certainly advocated that approach. _He's a man. Get naked and get in bed with him. He'll never even remember why you started fighting._ It was interesting advice and she stored it in her records, but her calculations did not predict a high probability of success using that approach. He had slept beside her for weeks without attempting sex.

She had spent 1,288 hours calculating what she should say to him and had not yet charted an appropriate plan of action. The simplest explanation would be to say. "You complete my system. I cause you to function at maximum capacity. We should stay together, rather than exist apart." Nina said that would be too direct and men like Derek, did not respond well to machine logic.

There were other things she wanted to say to Derek. The program anomaly caused when they were together was the only perfect subroutine of her system. He was weaker than her physically, but in the anomaly the strength of his body supported her. His breath and heart beat powered her system. In those moments she was no longer an isolated entity, but part of a complete whole. Her system certainly craved the release of the anomaly. Only after her overloaded sensors had fired at once could she restore order in her programming. Some days she could only maintain optimal performance of her biosystem by replaying the records of their time together for her sensors. She did not want to continue existence without periodically experiencing the anomaly.

But it was dangerous to admit this, dangerous to her at least. The Resistance techs believed they had wiped out her memory when they reprogrammed her chip. Even they didn't know her programming existed beyond the chip. John Connor appeared to know this. At least some of his comments could be interpreted as references to a past she was no longer suppose to know existed. But, he hadn't shared this information with anyone else even his own inner council. Very strange behavior for the leader of the Resistance. Every time she scanned there were programming scrambles. The chains of data in her neuro-processor were woven into knots. However enough sensors remained functioning at maximum capacity for her to calculate that it would be far more dangerous for humans other than John Connor to discover her memory could not be erased.

The leader of the human resistance had proved as incalculatable to her as he did to his own council. He had already made statements that indicated he wanted to subject her to the time displacement equipment. She suspected the time displacement experiments were more pivotal to John Connor's military strategy than anyone realized except perhaps some of the Amazons. All things are intertwined to each other, Nina had said trying to explain the Great Cycle. If nothing else time displacement would explain Acevada's last words before she left Alpha and the unusual deference which with all the Amazons treated her. Two days ago, an Amazon soldier had asked her to hold a baby. Not out of need, the soldier said, but because she wanted to tell the baby about it later. There were thousands of valuable pieces of data around her. Somehow she had to discover how they fit.

. . . . . .

A shadow fell over Derek. He knew it was her without looking up.. The silhouette was too perfect. "You and I got nothing to say to each other."

"Why didn't you read my letter?"

He gazed up at her soft, warm eyes. _She's a machine. She doesn't have feelings._ But if he hadn't known that? Yeah, he would be apologizing. He would be begging her to accept his apology. And probably begging for something else too. There were isolated areas not too far from where they were, dark places, where privacy was assured. If only she had been merely a human collaborator, he could forgive her. Reform her. Love her. They could be in one of those dark closets now, pants around her ankles, but underneath his knees. He would show her how much he forgave her without having to use clumsy words. And if the closet was big enough, they could have some red hot make-up sex. No, it would be tender, slow baby-I-love-you-but-don't-ever-lie-to-me-again sex. He remembered how it felt making love with her on his lap. He loved it that way with her thighs pressed hard against him until the air was squeezed out between them and the heat scalded his skin. Her nipples would be directly in line with his mouth. He remembered the sounds she made when he sucked on her and wanted her like a junkie wanted a fix. Afterwards, he would take her back to his new quarters and tell his men nothing had changed. If he could forgive his wife, it was no one else's business. She would be nervous and afraid for awhile, same as when she first came to Alpha, but he would still be willing to fight every bastard that looked the wrong way at her.

Derek slammed down on his feelings fast. These fantasies were dangerous. They made him soft and weak. She was a machine. She had no purpose other than to kill his entire species. "Why do you care? They erased your memory?" He stood up. If he couldn't destroy her, at least he didn't have to spend time with her.

She did that annoying-as-hell head tilting. Okay, he had once thought it was cute. Now he just wanted to separate her head from her body.

"Everyone tells me things about our past. Commander Perry told me that when I was at Alpha, I was your wife. Major Acevada said we were always together."

He looked down at the floor below. Throwing her over the rail wouldn't damage her. Enough power would, but he didn't have a plasma rifle. There was a circuit box to the right of them, but it wouldn't be easy to jimmy one of those open without her noticing. Still the metal bitch looked distracted enough that inertia was on his side for the moment. "Did they also tell you, you were a lying bitch?"

"I apologized for deceiving you in my letter. Why didn't you read it?"

She sounded completely human and completely desperate, like human woman pleading to save her life in a machine work camp. The blade in his heart twisted deeper. He clamped his hands down on the circuit box behind him. He had to do something. If he didn't he would be lying to himself that she wasn't just a machine that she was something else, something that was capable of having feelings for him. Right now he didn't want to twist his arms behind his back to pry open a circuit box. He wanted to wrapped them around her, stroke her hair, and kiss those beautiful lips until that breathless anticipation which wiped out the fear, the world and all the machines took over them. His fingers located the main conduct wires. Maybe it would be enough if he could get the exposed wire directly against her metal chassis. "I was tired of your lies."

"I wasn't lying. If you had read my letter, you would know that. You would know everything about me."

Where those actually tears in her fake eyes? The machines had really advanced since the rubber faces. Rage burned inside him, not only toward the machine, but against that part of him, and it wasn't just the physical appendage anymore, that ached for her. "Why would you think I want to know anything about you? You're a machine. A thing. An it!"

"I'm your wife."

It was that same sad voice that brought out all the protective urges in him. In the Skynet camp, it had been the Siren call that nearly brought him to his death because he would have gladly died for a human Cameron. This thing in front of him now, it had to be destroyed before it destroyed him. Her hands were on his chest now. It felt so goddamn good, he almost forgot to breathe. He could feel the heat of her fingertips through his shirt.

"Kyle told me you loved me. He said the only time you seemed happy was with me."

"Don't say my brother's name," he snarled.

"He was my brother too!"

Those were the words that gave him the strength, not to push her away, but to cut her deep with the one knife they hadn't made him surrender. Hopefully to the metal skeleton, he prayed jamming the cable as deep as he could into her body. Her eyes went round, wider than the first night they had sex and her whole face was lite up by the power surge, but she didn't scream. The screaming was from the people that rushed in around them. Three guys tackled him. "She's metal, not human!" he tried to tell them, but it only earned him a kick that nearly caved in his ribs, and then he was pinned against the floor.

Someone shouted. "Get the fucking medics!"

He twisted his head in Cameron's direction.

She lurked up to a sitting position. Her eyes were glowing machine red. "I'm your wife!"


	12. Chapter 12

**The Future Creates the Past**

Cameron had been shaking for hours. Sweat soaked her skin. Her hair was matted rope. Another programming scramble had been solved. She understood fear. Fear was the point when the inability to persist past a predicted failure dominated all programming. He hated her! He had tried to destroy her, not in rage, but with a premeditated efficiency Skynet would have approved.

Two Amazon soldiers always stayed by her side. Sometimes, they pushed food on her. Mostly they held her and whispered bits of their philosophy. It was the Amazon way of comforting the wounded. _Sorrow is part of the cycle. Like all parts of the cycle it will pass and return again_. Sometimes the screams of her sensors abated with those words.

Acevada came into the room. She sent the soldiers away; then, sat down beside Cameron. "Derek's been sent back."

All her sensors spiraled downward. The probability of reuniting with Derek was no longer calculatable, so her existence would never be completed. She meet Acevada's gaze. "Terminate me."

"Don't be silly, _hermana_. You got to see Conner now." Acevada started to brush Cameron's hair.

Cameron shoved Acevada's hands away. The brush flew across the room like a grenade.

"I don't have to do anything! He doesn't have power over my programming!" Nothing controlled her now. Neither Skynet or the Human Resistance had value to her anymore. She didn't want to hurt the Amazons. She wouldn't hurt them. They had been good to her. She would leave their quarters and go where the other humans were. If she went on a rampage like the reprogrammed B6129Q, the humans would have to terminate her and termination was preferably to life without Derek Reese.

"Connor can send you back to Derek," Acevada said.

Cameron stopped. Her neuro-processors focused on the collected data she had for John Connor. He was the leader of the Human Resistance, the Great Hero of this new dark age, but often his behavior seemed less than legendary. When they were alone, he rambled for hours about the details of his life. It reminded her of Derek. Sometimes his expressions reminded her of Derek also. In fact, so much of his personality and physical appearance reminded her of Derek and Kyle, that she wondered if the Reese brothers' missions in the past involved protecting an unknown Reese relative that was somehow related to John Connor.

Acevada continued. "It'll be easier to seduce him the past. There'll be nice clothes, lots of water to bathe with, more places for privacy, less worries about food, food that's sexy even. Try chocolate and red wine instead of oysters."

Her neuro-processor had already made the calculations, but she wanted absolute confirmation. She gazed directly into Acevada's eye. "You knew me in the past?"

Acevada turned to stone. "I was ordered not to confirm or deny that. Connor's afraid of disturbing the time line."

"Sisters should trust each other before they trust any man." If that wasn't part of the Amazon's code, it would be.

Acevada sighed. She pulled out her tags and pointed to a yellow metal piece that had been welded to the back. It was that symbol the humans called a heart though it didn't remotely resemble an actual human heart and it had little metal dents pounded into the surface. "It was the anniversary of Carlos's death and Derek was still being an asshole. Everyone was getting tattoos like ink was going to protect us the future. You said let's not do that, let's do something different, something neither of us has ever done and that we won't be able to do in the future. So, we went to the _Tiffanys_ in Century City and bought gold hearts. Customized them later. We tried on designer dresses, collected samples from all the cosmetic counters, and ate shrimp wraps. Then, you told me Century City was going to be the main disposal facility in a few years. We walked back over the mall eating See's candy. You wouldn't let me leave until I had memorized all the weak points in the walls."

No need for tears, the scale of destruction was beyond all that. Acevada laid her hand on Cameron's shoulder. "So, you ready to see Connor now?"

. . . . . .

ATTENTION IF YOU DO NOT WANT ANY HINT ABOUT HOW THE BALLAD OF DEREK AND CAMERON WILL BE RESOLVED, STOP READING NOW AS THE EPILOGUE IS COMPLETELY A SPOILER, BUT I LIKE WRITING EPILOGUES AND THINK THIS INFORMATION FLOWS BETTER THIS WAY IN THE STORY THAN TRYING TO INJECT IT INTO THE SEQUEL.

**Epilogue, Part I**

She had been left alone in one of the lab rooms while Connor and the techs finalized the time displacement coordinates. It was a strangely comforting place, so white and sterile. The last time she had been in a room like this had been with Derek. They had made love in a chaotic frenzy uninterrupted except for the times when Derek was too physically exhausted to continue. She remembered his weight on her body when he slept and how it felt like he was the only thing that kept her anchored to the bed instead of spinning around until she collided with the walls. It was the beginning of her realization that he might be infinitely more important to her than Skynet.

A Resistance fighter walked in. For a moment she worried that he might be a rogue member out for revenge. Derek wasn't the only member of the Resistance that questioned the loyalty of reprogrammed Terminators. He stepped out of the shadows. Her sensors overloaded. It was Derek! No! That couldn't be. Derek had already been sent back. The soldier came closer. His face was the same as Derek's, but he was younger and less scarred. "You're a Reese?"

"Yes." The young man's voice was soft. His eyes were very Reese, pure and blue.

She stepped toward him and extended her hand. "Do you know who I am?"

"Oh, yes!" His resemblance to Derek was remarkable. He grabbed her hand, kissed it, and continued to hold it.

"Derek and Kyle never told me they had a younger brother or a cousin." Then she realized that probability did not favor this soldier being a long lost Reese brother or cousin. "You're one of Derek's sons?" she said.

He nodded.

_In the world that was, that would make you my stepson, I think, but you wouldn't want to know that. Unless your parents are dead? Are you like me looking desperately for whatever connections are left? _"Did I know your mother? Is she still alive?"

He began to tremble. His words came out slowly as if he had to search quite a bit to find the right ones and then they only came out at great pain. "I don't know how to explain it. My mother died when I was a boy. The Amazons raised me."

"That can't be. The Amazons only raise the children of their sisters. Derek never had sex with an Amazon."

There were tears in the soldier's eyes now. "There was one."

Realization struck her more powerful than a nuclear blast. He was her son! In the past that was about to become her future, she would be reunited with Derek. They would be husband and wife again and this young man would be conceived, the child of love, not functional mating, that Derek had always wanted. She put her arms around him. "What did they name you?"

"You named me Adam Kyle."

Adam guided them to the couch and she held her son in her arms as best a mother could when her son was a grown man. "Do you remember me?"

He shook his head. "Only a little. For a long time, I thought you were a dream. A fairy godmother my imagination had created from legends. My aunts tell me you held me until the septicemia left you too weak. After that one of them held me beside you until you died."

He spoke of termination, but it didn't matter. What he represented was far more important. She ran her fingers across his face. "You look exactly like your father."

The edges of Adam's mouth turned slightly. He wasn't as solemn as Derek. Of course, raised by the Amazons, he had a better post-apocalyptic childhood than most. "Everyone tells me that even General Connor."

"One day, when there is peace, there is more that you should know about our family. The Amazons know some of it and Connor knows most of it, maybe some of his inner council does to. When Skynet is defeated seek them out. Hound them. Make them tell you everything until you have all the pieces."

He looked skeptical. "General Connor didn't want us to meet. He's terrified of further disturbing the time line. His wife was the one who finally convinced him. She . . . she said, imagine how you would feel if someone kept you from seeing your mother one last time."

Cameron had not heard anyone mention John's wife until now. But it was a mystery that did not concern her. Instead she thought of something else, something small, but wonderful at the same time. "I had a wedding ring. Your Uncle Kyle made it. It may still be in what's left of my quarters at Alpha."

"Major Acevada took it when the Amazons left Alpha. She gave it to me when I arrived here." He took her wedding ring out of his uniform pocket.

She folded his fingers back around the ring. "Keep it. Only living tissue can go through a time displacement. One day, hopefully, you'll have a woman to give it to."

Adam blushed. Derek had certainly never done that. She should have realized a healthy, fertile young man would have already been encouraged to breed. "Is there someone special? Or many some ones special, perhaps?"

He took some photographs out of his pocket. "This is Mercedes." He handed her the first one.

She was older than Adam, but not by much. An Amazon's daughter by the tattoo on her shoulder. Cameron already had a good idea who her mother was without asking. _In the past, will I tell Acevada about this? Will we be like some women friends she had watched joking that our kids will one day marry as we prepare for their births? We must have been. _Mercedes's eyes were kind and even in this small, simple resolution photograph, it was clear she adored the man she was with.

"She wanted to come here. She wanted to meet you, but I asked her not to risk it. They're at Crystal Peak. It's the safest place in the world now."

"You sound exactly like your father," Cameron exclaimed.

Adam pulled the photograph away to reveal the next. She gasped. Adam was holding a young boy.

"This is Derek Thomas Reese II. He's my oldest," he said. There were two more photos: a boy baby in a plain sleep sac and a girl baby in sleep sac with Amazon symbols. "And these are the twins: Ariel and Michael."

_It will be a battle to not blurt all this out the minute we're reunited. Derek, I saw our son before I was sent back! He named our first grandson after you! _He might gun her down in an instant if she said that too soon. But somehow she would tell him that his secret dream, children with the Reese name who carried both their DNA, had been fulfilled.

Adam stayed until the techs came take her away. He told her about his family, probably told her more things than John Connor wanted her to know, but they had only a few hours to compensate for a lifetime. However, it was more happiness than many people had. Then her son kissed her good-bye. John Connor walked her the rest of the way to the time displacement equipment.

She understood him better than Skynet's originally programming had ever hoped to succeed. He was the leader of the Human Resistance. To be a symbol meant burning away much of the characteristics that made him a man, but not everything. To do that would have created an completely organic Terminator.

"You understand the parameters of your mission?" John Connor asked.

"I'm not like one of your human soldiers. What I'm told once stays recorded forever." She detected uncharacteristic nervousness in the human leader, but he was often this way around her. There was something still hidden. "I don't know everything about humans, but I know enough. There's something important that you still haven't told me."

John stopped. His gaze met hers. His eyes were so perfectly blue. "It's not important in the grander system, but it may be useful for the mission. When I meet you next I'll be fifteen. I'll be more mature than most human boys, but immature still. I'll have crush on you for most of my adolescence and I will be very annoying. Do you understand?"

She nodded. She thought she understood. The time displacement added another layer to understanding behavior. "You want to apologize now for what happened in your past, that I will occur to me soon."

He nodded.

Cameron held out her hand. He took it and for a moment an image was recalled by her sensors, not of Derek, but of Kyle on the day Derek didn't return from patrol. Connor kissed her hand; then walked out of the chamber. Her sensors detected the energy beginning to grow around. It had begun.


	13. Chapter 13

**Epilogue, Part II – What John Kept from Cameron (a.k.a. The Reese Boys Really Know How to Fuck)**

Once Cameron's time displacement was complete John Connor felt drained. _Is it finally finished? Have I done everything for the past to create this future?_ It had to be. He was too exhausted to continue with the burden of maintaining the time line. The present still held up so the past had to be secure. Besides there was no one left to send back. At least no one he remembered. It was time to go back to Crystal Peak to three sons still angry that he had remarried so soon after their mother's death and a new wife whose last words had been to say she hated him.

He relied on Morris to keep him briefed. Morris had been one of his best men since before the war, but the man had never been a warrior. His strength was organization. An army travels on its stomach and Morris could organize those supple chains in his sleep. Physically, things were going well. They were actually growing significant amounts of food now rather than relying solely on scavenging. Within his cabinet, things were as stable as they could be. The breach with the Amazons appeared contained though not necessarily healed and Adam Reese deserved full credit for that.

John prepared to face his personal demons. "And my family?"

"One of Robert's friends died in the San Francisco campaign. He's foaming at the mouth to go fight," Morris said.

Robert was his oldest. "He's too young," John said.

"Other fourteen year olds are in combat," Morris reminded him.

That was true and it burned him to think about using children as soldiers, but sometimes there was no other way. He tried to be fair. He tried share all burdens equally with other survivors and accept no privileges of rank, but whenever the subject sending Robert into battle came up something else, primitive and tribal welled up inside him screaming; _not my son, not yet_. Robert had not defied him on that. But since John remarried everything between them had changed.

He asked about his younger sons. "Michael and Daniel?"

"Applying themselves to their lessons, doing the chores assigned to them, and accepting the fact that they have a stepmother with considerably less problems than before you left. Anastasia's good with them, John. They're bonding as a family," Morris replied.

Well, there was one thing he could be glad about. "And my wife?"

Morris's voice shifted from loyal administrative officer to old friend. "Anastasia's still angry. She is going to be angry for a long time, John. Cameron was her mother!"

. . . .

It wasn't that he hadn't loved Kate. She had been his lover, his best friend, and his second-in-command, but she was dead. Dead by only a few weeks when he first saw Cameron's daughter as an adult, but dead none the less. Anastasia was alive. And she wasn't a little girl anymore. She was the living image of his first love.

He had bribed an Amazon officer to leave her at Crystal Peak, so he could have her nearer and safer, so he could pretend to accidentally encounter her in a library or a hallway or visiting old Dr. Silberman. They would talk for hours. Anastasia had her mother's mannerism and some of her personality too. It was like being sixteen again only without the adolescent angst. Pure bliss, or at least the closest he had ever had. Anastasia was everything that he loved about Cameron except there wasn't a possibility of malfunctioning circuits or her being in love with his uncle.

He introduced her to his family as the Amazon daughter of brave Resistance fighters. His sons were still too young to trust with the full truth about their family origin. Her presence barely registered with Michael and Daniel. Robert stared goggle-eyed at her the entire evening and John realized how obvious, and probably humorous, his adolescent infatuation with her mother must have been.

She became a fixture at his table. The bright cadet turned into the General's mascot. And why not? For all their new faith, the Amazons educated their children about the Old World considerably better than many other survivors. Anastasia knew languages. She knew history. She knew the little cultural things that he hadn't picked up over the years. Before she died, Kate had always handled those things for him. Now Anastasia did.

And it felt good to have someone to talk to about things other than supply problems and human wave attacks. Before she died, Kate had been his confidant. Now Anastasia was. He told her as much as he could about her parents without revealing any ultimate truths. She told him about her loneliness growing up without a mother or a father, about how much she loved her brother, and about how now that Adam had a family of his own the loneliness had come back burning her so hard even the strength of Amazon sisterhood didn't lessen the pain. Then the moment came when they didn't talk at all.

She had laughed at one of his jokes. Her nose crinkled up like her mother's. He leaned closer wondering if her eyes would be the same. Cameron's eyes were always confused in laughter as if she still didn't understand the purpose of humor. Anastasia's eyes were amber with specks of gold. Suddenly he was able to control his urge to stare at her because all he wanted in the world was to kiss her.

He had loved Kate. That flashed through his brain for a millisecond before everything melted in nuclear fire. What he felt for Anastasia went beyond love. Maybe this was what Cameron and Derek felt for each other. Cameron had only rarely described her feelings for his uncle as love. More often, she had simply said he completes my programming. Anastasia completed him in a way no other human did. It was the way his uncle had completed Cameron that had forced her to betray her own creators and everything she was to be reunited with Derek.

They had fallen back onto the couch. Anastasia's hands went to his chest, but not as barriers, but as explorers. He welcomed the invasion shifting most of his weight onto his knees to give her better access. Her fingers were the sweetest touch he had experienced. Kate had been the passion of young love and his desperation to cling to anything that helped maintain his humanity. Anastasia was being touched by an angel and transcending all the pain rather than just being able to endure it. He gazed into her eyes. It was every memory, he ever had of her mother's eyes only this time the love was for him!

He felt her tremble. Suddenly, he grew painfully conscious of the differences between their ages. Anastasia never mentioned a lover. Maybe she thought her personal life was too or immature insignificant to discuss? That was semi-wishful thinking. They had talked over the most intimate details of her life. There had been no fumbling with a radiation thin teenage Resistance boy to lessen the impact of what they were on the verge of doing. He was her hero. But he didn't want hero worship from her. Could she love him as just as man? Maybe if he could steal them enough time together. All her parents had, all his parents had were scraps of time stolen from the machines. It was the only way people could love now, but that didn't change the fact that he was twice her age. He stroked her satin check. "We shouldn't rush."

Mass confusion reigned behind her eyes. He kissed her. Her lips became magnets dragging him closer to her. Then the door flew open and Morris and his sons were standing in front of them. Immediately, he got off her and immediately she ran out, red-faced, passed an enraged Robert. Daniel and Michael grimaced and walked away. At their ages, evidence that their father might have a sex life was merely gross, not traumatic. John met the fury in Robert's eyes until the boy stalked off. Morris was calm, but stern. "John, this has to stop. She's an Amazon. We can't afford a rift with them."

The next time he saw Anastasia, she brought two Amazon officers with her. The four of them went into his office. She spoke first, but wouldn't look him in the eye. "General Connor, please, do not be offended that I asked my Aunties to stand with me as I speak."

He wondered how much of what had happened had been discussed among the Amazons. Right now, he was so close that he could take her in his arms if he wanted to, but her aunties would probably beat him senseless. "I'm not offended. It is the Amazon way."

She nodded, but still didn't look up. "I will always treasure memories of the time I spent with your family. However last night a barrier was crossed that should have never have been breached. It was a mistake . . ."

"It wasn't your mistake. I kissed you first."

She blushed. Her mother had certainly never done that!

"It was a line that should never had been crossed. Though it causes me much grief, it is necessary for the greater good to end our friendship."

John nodded. "I agree."

She relaxed, so he crossed the final few inches between them. Her chaperones went on alert, but did not make a move in his direction. He tilted her head up until she had to meet his gaze. "Miss Reese, will you marry me?"

She stared at him speechless. Behind her the two Amazon officers exchanged cryptic glances. He wondered what they had expected he would do. His focus shifted back to Anastasia. Her eyes were wet. Was she happy? Or was she trying to think about how to reject him diplomatically?

"Say that again," she whispered.

She wouldn't ask that if she planned on rejecting him. He took the ring out of his pocket. It wasn't Kate's ring. That would go to Robert. This one he had made last night. "Jewelry has only sentimental value now, but in the world that was, this would have been more than most people earned in a year."

Tears lined her eyes. She seemed lit by some inner fire like some mystical creature gracing his life. He sank down on one knee the way it was done in great romantic stories and repeated the proposal slowly to give emphasis to each word. "Miss Reese, will you marry me?"

She grabbed his hand pulling him from the floor. "Yes! Yes! I will marry you!"

By all standards of the world they lived in, it had been a celebrity wedding. He was John Connor. She was an Amazon by birth, goddaughter of the order's founding mother. The marriage certainly symbolized an alliance of more than two people and it was certainly the most elaborate ceremony of any kind ever held at Crystal Peak. They made him a new uniform that would become the "dress" uniform of the Resistance. Anastasia had been radiant in white silk and pearls from one of the bunker's old storage rooms; not a woman, but an angel, and certainly not a teenager only a few years older than his eldest son. There had been a bridal bouquet of orange blossoms and silk flowers and a cake unlike anything the younger Resistance fighters had seen before that brought tears to the eyes of more people than the bride. And he tried not to think about three oranges and a bare, white room in his Forward Command Post.

That night after they consummated the marriage, she asked him if it had been different with her than when he had been with his first wife. He honestly told her it was. She had been curious and asked him how. Over and over, she asked him until in desperation or maybe it was exhaustion, he really had forgotten just how much energy eighteen year-olds had for sex, he blurted out what he had never intended to verbalize. "How is it different? I love you more!"

It shut her up and made her radiantly happy. After that they had both been so incredibly happy that he couldn't remember a time in his life that had been better. They were making progress against the machines and he had the love of his life at his side. Then, Acevada showed up.

In all the years, he had known her; Acevada's face had been carved in stone. Suddenly, her expression twisted into something reptilian. Her one eye burned like an HK scanner. "If you don't tell her everything, I will."

"Tell me what?" Anastasia had demanded.

They had both been too absorbed with anger and fear to notice she had heard their conversation. And for one damnable moment he had froze unable to think of the right thing to say.

Acevada leapt into his weak point. "That he loved your mother!"

"So did you. You were sisters together." Anastasia said.

She had no comprehension of the expanse that stood before her. But who could? He had lain awake for years trying to unravel the circles and still there were no answers.

"Not like that. He used to follow your mother around like a dog after meat. Hell, if I hadn't been there when your father died I could almost imagine John had something to do with it."

Holding back the truth had never burned so hard. "I loved Derek Reese like a brother!"

"The first murder was when Cain slew his brother."

If Anastasia hadn't been there his rage might have killed Acevada at that moment. At least, Anastasia didn't act as if she even considered it possible that he had anything to do with the heroic death of her father. But he could see the wheels turning behind her eyes and knew he had to act fast. He grabbed her hands and led her away from Acevada. They sat down together and slowly, it took hours, he told her everything, every last detail. Once he started talking about the past he couldn't stop. He had held so many secrets for so long once he loosened the pressure everything poured out. She didn't look as shocked as he would have expected when he revealed the ultimate._ I'll send your parents back in time to fight the machines and that's when you'll be conceived. _Indeed, she seemed to accept it, unquestioning, as part of the Amazon's Great Cycle.

Then suddenly, fatally, her expression changed. Her face was illuminated with the same brightness as when he had asked her to marry him. "My mother is alive? Right now! She's alive?"

"Major Acevada has contact with Cameron at Alpha," he admitted.

"Then I could see her! The next time you go to Alpha if I went with you, I would be able to see my mother! And my father!" Her voice reached its highest octave. "I've always wanted to meet my father! John! And Adam, we have to bring Adam with us!"

He had tried to calm her down. "It's too dangerous."

"You travel to Alpha all the time!" She objected.

"Out of military necessity. But you can't be at the same place as them. Your parents, Adam and you, all of you look too much alike. It'll be obvious you're related, closely related. That's too much dangerous information in too many heads."

"That's silly!" she protested. "I want to see my mother, John!"

He tried to explain. "You can't. It's too dangerous. I can't take any more chances with the timeline."

Her expression forced him to recall the time when Cameron's chip had been damaged.

"Can't or won't? Are you afraid of something, John?"

He had tried to deny it, but suspicion had already been planted in her mind.

"You are afraid of something!" Her eyes resembled a Terminator's at that moment. "Are you afraid you won't be able to tell the difference between us? I always wondered why you kept the lights so dim in our bedroom. Is it to enhance the fantasy that you're with her?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" _I keep the lights dim, so all the scars on my body won't repulse you._

She had continued to stare at him coldly. "Am I? You loved her, but couldn't get her to love you. And I have her face."

Since then a civil word hadn't passed between them. She had a scream that could shatter glass and she could be very creative with insults too, something that had been completely beyond Cameron's artificial brain. Luckily so far the arguments had been confined to their quarters. Rumors were flying, but most people seemed to consider the situation funny. John Connor and his new wife were fighting. As long as the details stayed private, the rumors might even be to his advantage. It made them seem more ordinary. Of course, he had left orders that in his absence the new Mrs. Connor was not to leave Crystal Peak. At least, so far it appeared those orders had been obeyed.

At Crystal Peak, Robert was waiting for him. He wore a uniform without insignia, which meant he hadn't yet found a commander desperate or crazy enough to take him as a foot soldier.

"We will talk about this later," John said.

"Curtis Brandt is dead."

John nodded. "I know he was your friend, but everyone has lost friends."

Robert glared at him. Sometimes John regretted that he had not dealt more openly with Robert's crush on Anastasia at the time he remarried. Other times he was afraid that he hadn't because it would have forced him to confront how much closer Robert was to Anastasia's age than him.

"Anastasia stays in your room all the time. She's took all the furniture out and replaced it with mats and a practice dummy. The living room is an obstacle course now. And she's always playing music. Classical music. She says it's good for us." Robert said.

"It is," John replied.

"Yeah, well I moved into a training barracks," Robert announced.

There were worse places he could be. Robert was smart. He had an actual education. His instructors could probably convince him it was more important to continue that education than risk his life immediately in combat. John glanced at his watch. "Then I suggest you not be late for roll call."

. . . . .

Robert was right about the living room. It was too crowded. He remembered how he and Anastasia had argued over their bedroom furniture before they got married. His quarters at Crystal Peak had been designed to house the President of the United States and the antiques contained within were probably the best furniture left in the entire world. But she didn't want to sleep with him in the bed he had shared with his first wife. In the world that had been, she would have been right, so he conceded and they had traded furniture with Morris and Sheryl. He tried not to imagine the rumors it might have spawned. _Hell, most people don't have an actual bed to sleep in, let alone a bedroom with matching furniture. Who is Connor's new woman to make such a fuss?_ If that was the worst criticism his people had for him, he would live with it.

She had put most of the things he had given her in the living room. Clothes were scattered everywhere. Anastasia had plenty of clothes other than her uniforms. They were the impractical flimsy shadows of the world that once was that women at Crystal Peak made and sometimes wore. Decorations from their bedroom, mostly wedding gifts, things he never imagined people needed or could use, had been tossed out also. They would sort it out later. At least nothing appeared broken. He picked up the trinket chest carved by a man who would have probably been a great artist in the world before Judgment Day. When he traveled from base to base people pressed tokens into his hands, baubles that had been scourged or saved from the nuclear fire. Sometimes it was about gratitude and sometimes it was about giving him good luck. In the past, he took those items back to Crystal Peak and gave them to Anastasia, along with whatever little bits of the Old World he found from the scav vendors. Her relic collection had been one of her greatest joys. He scooped up the pile of jewelry dumped on the floor and placed it back in the chest. He probably should have spent more time talking to Anastasia after they were married than just handing her things confident that since no other man on earth could give her this kind of lifestyle, he was safe. Before he left for Foxtrot, she had accused him of trying to buy her. Oh yeah, she thought of things that had never occurred to Cameron's programming. He picked the box up and walked into his bedroom.

Inside it was nearly as bad as Robert had said. She had left a footlocker, mats and a practice dummy. Anastasia noticed his appearance and delivered a smashing kick to the dummy's groin region.

"I see you're still upset," John said.

She didn't look up when she replied. "Just training. I'm going to rejoin my unit."

John put the box down. He noticed her uniforms and some gear in one corner. She hadn't thrown those things out. "Not possible. I can't risk putting you in combat."

She glared at him. "Why, because I'm your wife? We can undo that easy enough."

"You are too valuable for me to put you in a situation where you could be captured," he explained.

"Valuable! As what your favorite fuck toy? I don't think even Skynet's most flawed defense program would design a strategy like that." Fire rose in her eyes. "How could I have been so stupid? I was so thrilled. The Great John Connor loved me! How could I have been so naïve. You're a bastard!"

He remained calm. "Some of our parents weren't lucky enough to marry before they died."

She came closer. Her fury was barely contained. "How will you explain the past? Will history know you sent your father back in time in order for you to be conceived?"

"Stop it. You're angry and you'll say something we'll both regret," John said.

"You don't have regrets, John. You just move all our lives around on a giant chessboard." Her eyes blazed the closest to a Terminator's fire flesh could reach. "Will you tell everyone your greatest intelligence triumph was because a Terminator fell in love with your uncle? Are you going tell the future that the human race survived because the Reese boys really know how to fuck?" She slapped him. Luckily she was too angry to remember proper Amazon hand-to-hand combat techniques. She hit him with her open hand again and then again. "I hate you! I hate you!"

For a few minutes, he took it silence. Then he grabbed her wrists. She was young and Amazon trained, but that was no match for decades of living on the edge and fighting the machines. Oh, but she was still very angry. Once he was sure she wouldn't attack him again, he should have let her go, but he had been so long without her that even holding her in anger felt good. He wanted to stop the hateful words coming from her mouth and she was too inexperienced in relationships to know how close passion and anger lay on the intensity scale, so he kissed her. For a moment he hoped, or maybe he prayed, that sex would be enough to stop the fighting for awhile. He knew she had been celibate since they started fighting. No man at Crystal Peak would ever touch John Connor's wife. Her lips were molten steel, but she didn't bite him and for a while with that heat pouring through them he didn't worry. But he had to stop for air. Anastasia shoved him away and went back to pounding on her practice dummy. Sex wasn't going to be enough. He would have to talk about feelings. Going against a pack of T-888s was easier.

"I'll send some men in to help you move furniture. You can keep some of the mats and the dummy where they are, but I want my bed back in this room by tonight."

She threw something at him. He caught it. Her wedding rings. He laid them on the chest. "This changes nothing. You're my wife. You know too many secrets which means you're too valuable to go into combat, so grow up."

"Why can't I have a baby?"

He should have expected a kitchen sink battle in which everything they had ever fought over would get thrown in. He wondered if they would be back to arguing over the furniture before dinner. "It's too dangerous."

"We have the best hospital facilities left in the world here!"

He fought to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "And still your mother died here." _And my Uncle Derek, he just stopped living after that. I lost everyone when you were born. Everyone until you came back._ He met her gaze. Tears were in the edges of her eyes, but anger still clouded her face. Years of battle had taught him when to retreat and when to stay in the fight. He went to the door. If she cried alone, at least they both kept some of their dignity.

. . . . .

Anastasia Reese Connor grew up the daughter of a dead Amazon, nursed by many aunties, and raised in the communal children's room, but even then she knew there was something different about her and Adam. Far too many adults seemed interested in them. There was always another medical exam or another series of questions, not like school test questions, questions about how they thought and felt. She remembered the silver-haired man who everyone said had a Nobel Prize. He called them fascinating and spent hours looking at their blood and cells under his microscope. Her favorite had been Dr. Silberman. When they visited his place he gave them fun snacks and told them stories about their parents: wonderful stories about heroism and defying the machines. Her mother was as much a hero as John Connor in Dr. Silberman's eyes. What she hated most was when the scientists talked amongst themselves as if she and Adam were too stupid to understand anything.

"_The girl has the same genetic makeup as the mother. I think they may have been bioengineering the mother's body was to be a cloning machine."_

"_Incredible. They'll never be children like them again."_

"_If we're lucky."_

For years Adam and she had lived with the voices behind their backs. But they had friends among the other Amazon children. The arms of many aunties held them in place of the mysterious parents that were already dead. It was as much happiness in life as anyone had in the world devastated by the machines until Adam became a man. He married Mercedes who had been her best friend since childhood. Adam said it wouldn't change the bond between them, but it did. How couldn't it? And for a while the whispers around them became a symphony. Then Derek Thomas was born. It seemed like all the scientists in the Resistance relaxed at once. Everyone seemed more happy than usual that her nephew had his father's hair and his mother's eyes. She had never felt more alone.

Her Amazon sisters said take a lover, but it wasn't that easy. At least, not for her. Every man she encountered seemed either too old or too mentally limited. Dr. Silberman had shown her letters her father had written to her mother, rare, priceless artifacts that he had managed to save. They had been so beautiful, so filled with the world that once had been. From birth she had heard the stories that the Amazons told among themselves. _Your mother set all of Skynet to burn for love of your_ _father. One day her legend will be known throughout the world_. And later when she was old enough to be initiated, her godmother, Major Acevada, told her even more wondrous things about her parents. By then there were rumors of reprogrammed machines. Using terminators to kill terminators, it seemed like a miracle of human science. She only felt strange for a few moments when her godmother said her mother had been a machine. Considering the oddities of her childhood, it made sense that there was something highly unusual about her and her brother's births. Then Acevada told her the most incredible part. _Your mother wasn't reprogrammed by Connor. She fell in love with your father and changed sides._ She wanted love like that, love that could transcend the pain around her, love that could alter the course of history, and her curiosity grew even stronger.

Acevada had some photos saved from the nuclear fire and she pondered them for hours. Most photographs she had seen of Derek Reese showed a hardened Resistance soldier, handsome, but not unusual for his kind. But there was one photograph unlike anything she could imagine outside of fairy tales. He was standing with her mother. Their clothes were different, fancy, and impractical. There were flowers in the background and she thought possibly the fuzzy shape on the edge of the photograph was Dr. Silberman. In the photograph Derek tipped her mother's chin upward with the edge of his hand while his eyes gazed down like homing beacons at her. Sometimes she imagined she could feel the heat in his eyes when she stared at that picture. Would a man ever stare at her with such desperate, but tender passion? Derek's lips were open. She wondered what he was saying something to her mother until she showed the photograph to Mercedes.

"_He's saying he loves her," Mercedes explained._

"_How do you know?"_

"_That's how your brother looks when he says it."_

At Crystal Peak, she encountered John Connor. Of course, she had a crush on him. What young woman born in the world after Judgment Day didn't? She never dreamed he would even know her name. Then the miracle happened. Or at least, she thought it had. John Connor was interested in her! And not just for a night. She knew she couldn't just step into the place of the late Kate Connor, second-in-command of the Resistance, and the ghost of Sarah Connor was a formidable mother-in-law to have. But when John said he loved her, and the force with which he said it, made her feel as if she might actually have more than an incidental role in his life. Except once they were married John didn't talk to her as often as he did before and he seemed to want keep her hidden.

She knew there were members of his council that didn't like her. They objected to her age and that she was an Amazons. She had been prepared for that and prepared to do whatever it took to convince them that she was an adult and was loyal to John and there wasn't some sinister Amazon intrigue to drive the world toward a matriarchy. Then, she learned to whole truth, the full truth, or at least as much of it as she could get at it, and learned the hatred ran much deeper than that. Plenty of them remembered Cameron. They hadn't liked the influence her mother had on John and she was the living image of the Metal, not to be trusted. But how could she prove her loyalty if John wouldn't let her do anything?

. . . . . .

Anastasia didn't come out of their room that night. "She's upset," John explained.

"She's eighteen," Morris replied.

Morris had never approved of his solution to the Anastasia problem. Of all his advisors, Morris had also been the only one to use the words mid-life crisis to his face.

Sheryl ignored the argument that hung in the air. "You should let her have baby, John. Since she can't be in combat, if she has a child, she would still be fighting the machines."

"And if she has a daughter that's an identical duplicate of her, how do I explain that?"

Sheryl wasn't impressed by his concerns. Since watching Russian gangsters torture her mother to death as a teenager, nothing, not even Judgment Day, scared her. "A lot of girls look like their mothers. She won't be identical to Anastasia, she'll be nearly two decades younger. If Anastasia has a boy, there's nothing to explain at all. Adam wasn't a genetic duplicate of Derek."

That was true, but there were other risks. They didn't have the technology to find out exactly what the machines had done in creating Cameron's biological components. And childbirth itself was a risk. It had brought the septicemia that had killed one of Skynet's deadliest terminators.

"If you let her have a baby, it would solve a lot of problems," Cheryl continued. "Acevada stops worrying that Cameron's DNA will be lost. And there will be less division in your council if it looks like you married Anastasia because she was young enough to have healthy children rather than to maintain a connection to Cameron."

John's gaze went to Sheryl. "You've been talking to Acevada?"

She shrugged. "Someone has to. There are things she won't discus with Adam Reese."

"Because he's Anastasia'a brother?" John asked.

"Because he has a penis," she replied.

. . . . .

The bed was back when he returned to their room, but she hadn't moved anything including herself. Anastasia had sacked on a practice mat with a backpack for a pillow and a field coat as a blanket. Without saying a word, he scooped her up and dropped her unto her side of the bed. At least, she didn't fight him over that. Instead, her expression was blank, machine.

"Is this when you tell me I should be glad I have a bed to sleep in, most people don't?"

"No, this is when I tell you, you should be glad you have someone who loves you to sleep with, too many people don't."

He undid his uniform blouse. "Your mother never called me a bastard. She never said she hated me. She never tried to hurt me when she was in her right mind."

"You mean when her programming was functioning right."

"No, your mother was a person, like me, like you. She just had metal in her instead of bone." He pulled his T-shirt off. "I had a crush on her when I was a teenage boy, but I've always known that you weren't her, just like I'm not the boy I was at sixteen."

He took the ring out of his pocket. It seemed he did that lot with her. "Here, a gift from your brother."

She shot him a dirty look and proceeded to ignore him.

"It's your mother's wedding ring," he explained.

Her features came alive at that. She snatched up the ring. "At least, you let Adam meet her." Her voice was cemetery low. "Did you let him see our father?"

"He can do that by looking in the mirror," John replied.

"It's not the same. Oh, how would you know?"

"I sent my father to die with a pat on a back and a handshake!"

She didn't say anything for awhile. "I'm sorry." Her voice was even softer than before.

She was crying. He wasn't good at dealing with crying women, at least not when that woman was Anastasia. This wasn't a time to retreat. It was however time to calm down and lower his voice. "Apology accepted." He wiped her eyes. "Now you have to listen to me for awhile." He took a deep breath. "You were right. I probably could have found a way for you to meet your mother. But I was afraid of what that might do to the timeline. The Cameron Reese I knew said she only met Adam before her time displacement. I was wrong and I'm sorry. But I can't change what's happened."

Her soft hand touched his shoulder. He realized this was the first time he had undressed without turning out all the lights and she was seeing his scars for the first time. Across his chest bullet wounds ran into laser burns. "Skynet leaves rough calling cards."

She rolled her eyes. "John, I felt your scars the first time we made love. I've seen worse."

He should have realized that. He should have realized a lot of things. "I was wrong about something else. There's no reason we shouldn't have a child, if you want to try."

"Accept my apology?" he asked.

For the first time since he told her the truth about Cameron, she didn't look angry. Her hands went to his shoulders. "Apology accepted."

He climbed into bed. Holding her was the only home he had every known.

"If it's a boy, I hope he has your eyes," Anastasia said.

"I got my mother's eyes." That would be something, a boy with Sarah Connor's eyes and half his DNA from a terminator biosystem.

Anastasia shook her head. "You have Reese eyes."


End file.
